Educational Coordinator Alicia Jenkins, with the YES Program, raised more than $5,000 dollars for Oak Hill Middle School students to visit Wild Adventures, near Valdosta, this summer as part of their summer camp experience.
“Alicia has done a phenomenal job working with the community and utilizing community support to lead us to this wild adventure,” said Sequena Stanton, director of Afterschool Achievement.
As part of the YES Program grant, students can participate in an array of educational and fun summer activities. This year, summer camp’s theme was entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial themes, so the YES Program faculty and teachers planned on first having students learn about the entrepreneurial side of the amusement park, and then taking a field trip to experience what those entrepreneurial ideas can create.
“This field trip allowed them to make connections to different opportunities they might not see in our small community. They were able to learn about different career paths, leadership skills, and how to think outside of the box,” said Jenkins.
“It incorporated different career paths that definitely interested a lot of the students and also incorporated some really cool things that they've never experienced like roller coasters or a waterpark.”
This field trip was originally meant to be funded by the grant through a purchase order, which is an arrangement where the grant agrees to give the program enough money to fund a request. However, Wild Adventures contacted Stanton and said it could not accept a purchase order and instead needed all the money for tickets and more upfront.
“Since there was no way to pay for it without a purchase order, we would have had to cancel this trip, or we would have had to pay for it upfront without being able to be reimbursed by the grant due to the difference of how the payment works,” explained Jenkins. “So, I decided the Thursday before the trip that we were gonna’ raise the money and see what we could do.”
In an attempt to save the trip, and with only a few days before the planned departure, Jenkins created a nonprofit Facebook fundraiser that the community could donate to. In addition, the program allowed people to individually sponsor students along with offering to do a car wash to raise the money.
“If I canceled the trip, I wanted to make sure I tried every avenue possible first,” said Jenkins. “And probably within the next two or three hours after I created the fundraiser, we had raised half of (a targeted) $4,000,” said Jenkins.
Many people individually donated to the cause along with several businesses, including Sinclair Oconee Homes of Milledgeville, to ensure the students had the opportunity to go to Wild Adventures.
“By the time I awoke Friday morning, we had actually raised about $5,000 and exceeded what we had planned on raising,” said Jenkins. “I was ecstatic.”
According to Jenkins, the students had been preparing throughout the summer to go to Wild Adventures. The middle-school students were researching careers related to each area of the amusement park, learning about the background of the park’s original ideas, about leadership and much more through STEAM and hands-on activities that allow them to apply their knowledge to real-life situations.
“We were able to take 93 students and they all got to experience new things. They’ve been talking about the trip for days after it has happened, so it made a huge impact on them,” said Jenkins.
“I just want the community to know how important it is to us and how much we appreciate the generosity, support, and the amount of love that everybody showed the kids throughout this process.”
Jenkins and Stanton expressed that they believed God was at work to ensure the trip was going to happen because soon after they hit their goal, Wild Adventures reached out a second time to express they would accept the purchase order. With this announcement, the YES Program gave all the donors the option of being refunded or allowing their donated money to be used for food or toward the final summer events on the calendar.
“God was making this adventure happen,” said Jenkins. “So, we reached out to all who donated and offered them a refund or to put their contributions towards our last summer activities.”
Many of the original donors agreed to put their contributions towards other activities which will help to fund the final summer celebration that is approaching. Through this show of generosity, the YES Program faculty discovered just how much the community wishes to support the program and its local youth.
“I was literally beside myself with the amount of support we have in our community,” said Jenkins. “So, we made the decision to start a nonprofit foundation account where people can donate within the community at any time.”
The nonprofit foundation account will allow community members to donate money at any time towards the YES Programs endeavors during the school or the summer months. At this time, faculty are working to set up an electronic way to donate, but physical donations can be made at this time by contacting Alicia Jenkins or Sequena Stanton.
“This was a team effort and there's no way this could have happened without the group of teachers and the adults that we have at the YES Program,” said Jenkins. “And without the support of our community, our students would have never been able to have these new experiences. So, thank you to everyone who was involved.”