News Postings is our version of a BLOG and will address topics under multiple categories including: Reflections, News, Events, Christopherisms and others we may add in the future. These categories are intended to give you a glimpse into our life as we deal with the diagnosis of ALS. We invite you to click on comments and give your feedback which will appear on the site. The comments you make may spark further discussion and are greatly encouraged. If you don't want your comment public, just send us an email instead. Thank you for being here!
Last week was absolutely one of the busiest, yet most rewarding weeks in quite some time.
One of the first activities for starting the Denver Chapter of Extra Hands for ALS was to have Connie Stauts, the Program Manager from Boise, ID come in and train us. She scheduled herself to be with us all day Friday and Saturday, the 11th and 12th of November. Our objective was to have five volunteer families and mentors along with ten student volunteers ready for training. Since there was not a lot of immediate reaction to my first posting on Extra Hands we were getting a little worried.
We did get a response from Susie Roy who helped coordinate an event for fellow PALS, Lisa Nichols from Greenwood Village. Susie teamed with a teacher from Smoky Hill High School, Katie Kleeman and together with contributions from many others had over 2000 people raise around $100,000 in one day. Susie put us in touch with Katie and we asked if she might arrange a meeting with one of the groups at her school that might be interested in a community volunteer project. We were hoping she could set it up for the Friday that Connie, our trainer, would be in town so she could show us the ropes of a student recruiting presentation. She had successfully set up two or three class presentations starting around 10:45AM. We were heading out of town for Wednesday and Thursday and would return in time to present on Friday.
Our trip out of town was a speaking engagement in Kansas City for Northwestern Mutual (NWM), our life and supplemental insurance company. This is when we get to share our story of financial preparation to their representatives in order to give them a current, real life situation where their services are truly benefiting people. The idea is to inspire and motivate them and help us fulfill the fourth part of our mission. There were about 60 people there who made us feel very welcome. The feedback we received was incredible and made for a very fulfilling experience.
We returned Thursday night at about 7:00pm to find about 13 messages, 6 of which were from a much panicked Katie Kleeman from Smoky Hill HS. Apparently, she had arranged EIGHT presentations for Friday starting at 8:55AM! Her messages were left at home number while we were in KC, so we had no idea. She was very nervous that we were not returning her phone calls after she had gone through so much trouble. Needless to say she was quite relieved when Jennifer confirmed we would be there with our faithful trainer, Connie in tow.
We had the privilege of speaking to about 160 incredible young adults in various classes including Student Government, National Honor Society, AP Chemistry, Key Club, DECA, AVID, etc. These students have the ability to restore your faith in our future leaders. They are smart, attentive and very active in their school and personal development. I pray that Christopher will have the drive these students have.
After the school presentations, I took a nap while Jennifer and Connie conducted an orientation and training course for three students and two mentor volunteers. Saturday started with another training of three more mentors and then off to do two family intakes (Extra Hands lingo for ‘interview’.) We returned to the house to go over a few more details of our training. I took the next two days off relaxing and recovering!
If you would like to volunteer, please visit http://www.extrahands.org/1_signup.asp. We realize some ALS families may be reluctant to participate but consider this:
- Even with my good fortune of a slow progression many things have fallen off our priority list of taking care of the house and many other projects.
- Simply allowing people to help is a gift to those that feel helpless in your fight against ALS. Let them feel like they can do something to battle it with you.
- By allowing these students to help you are empowering them to become compassionate and responsible future leaders and ALS advocates that we need to further the awareness for this hideous disease.
We intend to have student and adult mentor volunteers as well as ALS families across the Denver metro area as well as Fort Collins and Colorado Springs. For this to happen, we need your help to network this organization to all your contacts. Funding is also of great importance so we will be looking for private and corporate sponsorship of the Denver Extra Hands for ALS program. Thank you all in advance for your participation and support.
