MARY ANN ROCCO
145 Beadle Lake Drive
Battle Creek, MI 49014
Tel: 269-209-6640
Email: roccomaryann@yahoo.com
MAY/JUNE 2019 GRANGE NEWS
Lets say goodbye to winter and hello to spring, The daffodils are blooming and spring is in the air.
Congratulations to Burns Grange for the two fundraisers they held for the tornado victims of Shiawassee County.
Fredonia Grange also shared, that half of the proceeds from the Spring Pancake Brunch was donated to the Dale Rosene AGLP scholarship fund.
Our Granges do many projects throughout their communities I would love to share something your Grange is or has done this year.
I would like to encourage Granges to nominate a person in their community for the Dedicated Worker Award and a Grange member for the VIP (Very Important Patron) Award.
The purpose of the Dedicated Worker Award is to honor someone in your community that has made a difference. Giving public recognitions to those who have given outstanding effort is important.
The purpose of the VIP Award is for each Grange to honor a member who has made an outstanding contribution to the Grange.
Only one entry from a Grange may be submitted to the State Grange per year. Submit a biography and a summary of the contribution the VIP nominee has made to the Grange. If possible also submit a photograph of your VIP. The submission shall be sent to the State Community Service Director by September 10th
Reminder
Lets keep working on our Community Service Reports they will be due in September.
When you need to contact me via email, please put your full Grange name on the subject line (ex. Fredonia Grange).
JULY/AUGUST 2019 GRANGE NEWS
What is Community Service?
One of the graduating seniors from the Battle Creek area had to write an essay on his involvement and ideas of what Community Service is. He has worked many hours for the Grange and I thought you would like to see what one of our Youth Members thinks about Community Service...
During all of the hours that I did for this project I didn't necessarily deal with fix or face any huge problems or any major complications, I mostly just helped the community through the Fredonia Grange. One of the things that I believe dealt with a problem would be when we made quilts for the homeless and the elderly along with making dog pads for the local animal shelter. Over the summer, including the
school holidays, snow days, or weekends my grandma would come to our house pick my brother and me up and take us to the Fredonia Grange. We would go make pet pads out of donated fabric for the local animal shelter and make quilts for the elderly, people in need and the disabled. I remember piecing together all the different fabrics into patterns that I thought looked well. I would help sew the quilts and once we made enough quilts we would bring them to the retirement home or to a shelter and hand them out to people.
Other than making and giving out quilts we also served food at the Marshall fair and weekend pancake breakfasts in the Fredonia kitchen. This helped raise money for the Fredonia Grange expenses including the money to make the quilts.
Along with that, I helped out our local zoo a lot and helped teach younger kids new soccer skills. I enjoyed teaching kids different skills for my favorite sport. One of the biggest things that motivated me to become involved in these community projects would probably have to be my grandma and great grandma they both have always been super involved in community service. I've always looked up to them and how they have been able to dedicate all of that time to a greater cause. I've learned so much from my grandma, great grandma, and the Grange that it is almost impossible for me to pick one specific thing that stands out above the rest but if I had to choose it would probably have to be that you can always help someone whether it's directly or indirectly. There is never a shortage of ways to help someone and I have always encouraged everyone to take full advantage of that.
There is no greater feeling than getting told that you made someone's day or that they look forward to seeing you, you just can't beat that feeling. I plan on doing community service until the day I am physically not capable of doing it anymore because that is how much I love it. To be honest, I didn't find out about this scholarship until I had 200 or so hours already completely done because that is how
often I volunteered. The fact that I could use those hours to put some money towards my education was just a huge benefit because I would've done that 400 hours whether or not there was money in it for me. My friends think it's crazy how many hours I've spent volunteering but that is one of the things that I feel makes me unique. I wouldn't trade those 400 hours of helping people or being surrounded by people that I love and who love me, for anything at all.
I hope we can all agree that this Grange Youth Member has Community Service in his heart. Continue working on your Community Service Report. Review the guide lines for your Report and it needs to be mailed to the Community Service Director by September 10th, 2019.