Raising Money for Gracie

Okay people, I am going to do a little advertising today. Before you stop reading to move onto something less commercial like, let me first inform you that it is for a little girl in a coma. More specifically, a little girl named Gracie Hinds.

Gracie is a nine year old girl who has been in a drug induced coma since August 25. She started having seizures for unexplained reasons and as a result, doctors were forced to put her in the coma to stop them. She is still in the coma because the doctors do not know what is causing the seizures. Fundraisers are being held to help the parents pay for the medical bills.

For my Interpersonal and Small Group Communications class, we were told to do some kind of service project. One member of my group of four knows the Hinds family and suggested that this should be our project. Today we got together to make donation jars that we could give out to some businesses. If you feel generous and want to donate, the jars are located in the following Ogden stores: Pita Pit, Ligori's, Grounds for Coffee, Roxberry Frozen Yogurt, Smith's (at the customer service desk), Beto's, Little Caesar's, and Jake's Over the Top. There is also one at the customer service desk at the Layton Smith's.

Why wouldn't you want to put money in these?

Also, on November 3, there will be a fundraiser for Gracie. There will be a hypnotist and a raffle. The raffle will be run by my group. The event starts at 7:00 and ends at 9:00 pm. The tickets are ten dollars to get in and one dollar per raffle ticket. The fundraiser will be held at the Wiseguys Comedy Club at 269 25th Street in Ogden. All of the proceeds will go to Gracie's family. You should all come. 

My group will possibly be having another event later on in the month to raise more money. I will let you know.

Behind the Scenes of My Make a Difference Day Article

Yesterday was national Make a Difference Day. To celebrate that fact, Weber State University had a day where students went to different organizations to volunteer. I went there to cover the event for the school newspaper The Signpost.

I volunteered for Habitat for Humanity to help build a sprinkler system for a house in Ogden. The job was to basically dig trenches where the schematics said to using pickaxes and shovels. We were each assigned a team of a few people. I was in team pink with two girls named Amanda and Olivia. We were pretty much given the plans for the sprinklers and told to go dig.

If you look closely, that's me on the right in the white shirt. Photo by: Amanda Lewark

It seemed kind of weird to me that inexperienced people were allowed to just work on someone else's house like that. It makes me wonder how well this sprinkler system will actually work once it is finished. We weren't given any kind of training, we were pretty much just told to have at it.

Our team had a bit of a slow start trying to figure out exactly what we were doing but we eventually figured it out. We spray painted out the lines where we were meant to dig, which led to me accidentally getting some on my fingernail which has yet to come off. I think it may be permanently pink.

After the ground was sprayed we continued by digging with pickaxes which are deceptively heavy. As I type this, my arms are ridiculously sore, proving how little muscle I have. It took three hours just to dig out the trenches for the piping.

While taking a break, I interviewed both Amanda and Olivia for my article. We had just been digging together for the past three hours so it was easy to start a conversation. They were both there to get service hours for their dental hygiene scholarships. They were trying to find cheesy yet profound things to say, Amanda was particularly proud of her quote, "We aren't just building sprinkler systems, we're building dreams."

All in all, it was an exhausting day of digging, let's just hope we didn't screw up that sprinkler system too badly.

For the full Signpost article without the personal commentary, click here: http://www.wsusignpost.com/2011/10/22/making-a-difference-through-digging-holes/