Student org to fix up St. Jude’s Ranch

February 23, 2012 by Julie Ann Formoso 

UNLV’s Circle K International will be hosting an event on Saturday to help children at St. Jude’s Ranch learn to interact with people outside the facility.

St. Jude’s Ranch is a foster care organization for abused, abandoned and neglected children. UNLV’s CKI has been working with the ranch located in Boulder City, Nev. since last year.

Circle K International is the college branch of the international service organization Kiwanis International.

St. Jude’s Ranch has two campuses one in Boulder City and one in the San Antonio, Texas area.

The Boulder City campus has 10 homes, each with the legal capacity of housing six children excluding babies. Eight of the homes are known as “therapeutic residential homes,” while the other two are aimed at helping pregnant teenagers and teenagers in need of learning the skills necessary to live independently.

Children at the ranch are in protective custody of the state.

Last year, UNLV’s CKI adopted one of the homes at the Boulder City campus and provided basic necessities such as clothes to the foster family for a year.

Saturday’s event is commonly referred to as a “single service project.” CKI members are responsible for coming up with service ideas and organizing the event. This is in contrast to service projects such as traveling to senior homes, which requires no planning.

The event will also count towards UNLV’s CKI’s obligation to host a service project during the month of February as a member of the Desert Oasis CKI Division.

UNLV’s CKI Single Service chair Jozet Tayson is excited about the event.

“To be starting this from scratch and hosting the event is a pretty amazing feeling,” Tayson said. “We go to the Boys and Girls Club and to senior homes. We do all these things, but we’ve never actually hosted an event and brought volunteers.”

UNLV’s CKI members have been planning the event since December and will be paying for the costs with money they have accumulated from fundraisers during the past several months.

They will be working alongside CKI members from other institutions in the state and from California, as well as its high school affiliate known as Key Club on Saturday.

An expected 100 volunteers will be participating in hard labor for two hours on Saturday, which will include painting the ranch’s fire hydrants, street curbs and street bumps.

“What we’re trying to do is make a service project specifically for [St. Jude's Ranch],” Tayson said. “We’re going to renovate their ranch to make sure it’s clean.”

Following the two hours of hard labor, the volunteers and foster children will participate in arts and crafts activities and events like kickball and line dancing. These activities aim to help children at the ranch befriend others from outside the campus location.

“A majority of [the foster children] are afraid to go outside and interact with people,” Tayson said. “We want them to be comfortable with us, so they can interact with people outside the ranch. We want them to know that they don’t have to hide away.”

Sarah Sheehan, director of community relations at Boulder City’s St. Jude’s Ranch campus, expressed gratitude towards  UNLV’s CKI members’ efforts.

“They’ve really been great,” Sheehan said. “I can tell you that volunteers are lifesavers. Without volunteers, there’s no way we would be able to operate the large operation that we do.”

Kevin Goble, UNLV’s CKI president, said he hoped that both the student volunteers and the foster children would learn valuable lessons during Saturday’s event.

“What I hope that the students get out of it is that helping others is something that’s really important,” Goble said. “And for the children, I just want them to know there are people in the community willing to help them and since we’ll have high school students there too, I hope they learn that it’s important for them to continue their education.”

Tayson said that hosting events and participating in service projects are activities that CKI members would always be willing to partake in without hesitation.

“We’re all volunteers. That’s what we do as an organization,” she said. “We always help out with our community. It’s what we do — it’s in our blood.”

 

Contact Julie Ann Formoso at

julieann.formoso.ry@gmail.com.