May Day Baskets 2021
Happy May Day! We continued our tradition of surprising each child at Pleasantville Elementary with a May Basket. We placed them on each desk before school, and we made sure the faculty and staff got one, too!
Competition For Kids Who Like Games 2021
It was SO great to actually get to have an IN PERSON event again! Covid has been hard for all of us. Thankfully we were able to have this outdoor event and have some fun!
Teens were split into teams and given a team color with matching bandana. Each team came up with a funny name, and team identity!
Teams competed in a bunch of games curated to match the different levels of interest of teens. From Basketball to Dodgeball to Improv and Trivia, there was a little something for everyone!
We had a GREAT time!
Thanks so much to all our volunteers! And thank you to Celebrate Church, Knoxville for lending us your 9-Square sets!
Creativity Challenge Winners
We are so IMPRESSED by all of the creative teens in our community. Our theme for this challenge was: HOPE: finding light in the darkness during 2020 and 2021. We were blown away by the beauty that these teens were able to capture and share with the world.
JUDGES
Our judges had a difficult job choosing a winner in each category. They took the time to look over every entry and provide encouraging feedback for each participant. (Feedback to every teen will be emailed out to them within a few days of this announcement). It was very important to our PvilleYI leadership team that judges came from outside of our team and board, since several of our team and volunteers have teens who wanted to participate.
THANK YOU to these wonderful people for being our Judges!
Anna Belzer
Carol Beier
Amy Core
Cass Lester
WINNERS
Here are the winners for our Spring 2021 Creativity Challenge! Each will receive a $100 cash prize. We will be in touch to get those prizes to you, winners!
Visual Art: SARAH MANN
Writing: ADONIAH KOENIG
The Girl With Her Hood UP
-Addie Koenig
Photography: JONAH SCHUMACHER
Music: ELIZABETH GOODALE
Dance: TARYN BRENT
Each of our participants will receive encouraging feedback from our judges, as well as being featured on our website! To see all of our entries, check out our Creativity Gallery!
Congrats to all our winners, and all participants! KEEP CREATING! We are SO proud of each and every teen!
Big News! Future Location of PvilleYI Headquarters
Our big announcement is that the old Pleasantville Grocery Store location will soon be PvilleYI’s headquarters!
Here’s a few things we covered in our live feed, if you missed it. Or, you can with it below!
1) This is not a youth center in the traditional sense. Although it will be focused on youth, the entire community will benefit from our work here.
2) We see ourselves as a Generational Enrichment Ministry. What this means is we believe that by impacting one person’s life in a positive way, generations around them and after them will benefit. This place will be a headquarters to carry out that ministry.
We want to make it clear that we also see ourselves as a SUPPLEMENTAL ministry. What this means is we have no intention of competing with youth groups and organizations that are already doing good work here. We want to connect kids with those, actually. This is why we will never host events on Sunday or Wednesday evenings during the school year. We love our local churches and groups and we want to support them as much as possible!
3) Our dream here is to provide classes like art, photography, music, cooking, and more. We envision hosting events and classes to help teens prepare for adulthood. Like life skills (how to fix a broken _____, how to change a tire, how to create a budget, and more). Entrepreneur and career planning will be on the agenda, too. We imagine bringing in Pleasantville alum to speak and inspire.
Optional Faith growth opportunities will be regular and we will help families connect with local churches, teach Bible reading skills (important for proper interpretation and application) and give out Bibles (to kids who express interest. This will never be forced or “required”).
This in addition to all the FUN stuff and events we’ve come to be known for around here!
4) Our entire community will benefit as well. From fun events (like our trick or treat on the square) to providing resources for parents and teens, to service projects. Research also shows that non profits like ours encourage growth and “livability” to a community! And beyond all that, we want to help bring some LIFE back to downtown!
5) How did this happen, how will it happen? This is a beautiful story involving our dear friend and board member Stacy Rowson, and her excitement about what we are going to do. Stacy is moving her Lakefront Living Custom Engraving & Gifts shop to a part of the location, and made it possible for us to begin this process. This is a beautiful story that we will tell in detail soon!
Currently, we are in the process of meeting with architects, engineers, and other building/construction experts. We are blessed to have board members with professional experience in this area, and they are doing their homework. This is definitely not something we have entered into blindly.
As we get more information, we will share it!
6) Call to Action
We need the community to do two things right now: 1) Pray. We need your prayer support more than ever! 2) Give. If you are excited about this project, we’d love for you to consider giving. Every little bit helps us to create a base to begin this protect. This is especially important at the early stages, as most grants we will apply for require a certain percentage of the funds to be raised.
7) WE LOVE this location, and we know the community does too. It has been nourishing Pleasantville for generations and our goal is that it will continue to. We love and appreciate the nostalgia surrounding Pleasantville Grocery, and we want to honor that history in many ways. We want to make sure the community understands that!
That’s it for now. We will keep all of you up to speed as this process unfolds! If you have questions, feel free to contact us! We’d love to talk!
If you want to know how to donate, you can see how here:
Art Supplies Donated to PHS
When we heard that the PHS CSD Art Department was in need of some supplies, we knew we needed to help! Creativity is such an important, God designed part of who we are. Fueling creativity in young people gives them purpose, gives them something to do, and helps them grow.
PvilleYI donated over $1,000 in supplies including sketch books, paints, colored pencils, and so much more. This was all made possible by the the incredible generosity of those who have donated to our organization! Great job, Pleasantville. Look what a wonderful thing you did!
The art supplies are already being put to good use. Look at these awesome Kindness Cards the students created for the residents at our local nursing home! We love this beautiful act of kindness, you guys! Great job!
We will treasure this beautiful, handmade thank you card!
Homecoming 2020
2020 has been a year for the history books. And not for good reasons. But we are all doing what we can to make the best of it! Even though we can’t have Homecoming the way we usually do around here, we found other ways to bring joy. For example, sure, we couldn’t throw candy during the annual Homecoming parade, but we found the next best thing: BUBBLES!
Our theme was “PvilleYI is Bubbling Over with School Spirit”! We had three bubble machines on high blasting bubbles around like confetti! We had a truck full of kids waving and we went all out in our orange and black!
We wore masks to be extra safe and comply to the school’s guidelines with the COVID-19 pandemic. If you saw Jennie without hers on, she wasn’t being rebellious, it fell off and landed in the bubble bucket. Oops. :)
We love our town’s fun traditions, and we were happy to get to participate this year even if it was a little different than usual.
Class of 2020 Gifts
The Class of 2020 had to give up so much due to the COVID-19 Pandemic. We wanted to give them a gift to help bring something special to a group of graduates who faced an awful lot of disappointment.
Each gift included a personalized padfolio, class of 2020 leather pen, a 2020 Quarantine Award featuring the coveted toilet paper roll, class of 2020 mask, and a letter of encouragement from us.
We wish the class of 2020 the VERY BEST as they enter into a whole new world of possibilities!
Prom & Party Dress Extravaganza!
We had an INCREDIBLE day at our Prom & Party Dress Extravaganza! Girls from Pleasantville and surrounding communities found the perfect dress with the help of our encouraging volunteers.
Prom is expensive. Anyone who has gone to one, or two, or more proms will tell you that finding a dress for a reasonable price is no easy task. For many girls, that perfect dress is out of reach because it is so expensive. This dress, worn for one night, can cost up to $500 or more. Half the battle for many girls is searching the clearance racks for something that will work. So we had this idea: what if people donated these hardly worn dresses and let any girl in the community feel beautiful wearing it? People responded with over 100 dresses being donated for this event. We were STUNNED at the outpouring of generosity!
Before we even opened the doors, girls were ready and waiting to shop. We had covered the walls of the Memorial Hall with encouraging messages about beauty and body positivity. There was a delicious table of treats and punch for them as they shopped.
Although getting girls a prom dress was the practical purpose for this event, we had an even bigger goal in mind. We wanted to shower these young women with kindness and encouragement. We wanted them to feel beautiful inside and out. Our volunteers helped girls search for dresses, urging them to “give this one a try”. Some girls were very shy, even saying, “no, that will not look good on me.” Our volunteers kept up the encouragement and many times, that dress that a girl thought would “never work for me”, was the one they walked out with. Their eyes lit up as they suddenly looked at themselves differently. Moms beamed, dads held back tears, and the girls were radiant. Sure, true beauty is on the inside, but these girls needed to know that they ARE beautiful on the outside too.
Each girl also received a swag bag full of little gifts from us and local businesses, and a chance to win a raffle prize! Thank you to AvaLayne Hair Studio, Chiropractic Hut, Jen for the Massage, Chelsea Bender and Kirsten Furnal for Young Living Makeup sets, Lakefront Living Custom Engraving and Gifts, The Well-Knoxville, Jennifer Holdredge for the Mary Kay samples, Jessica Haigins for the paparazzi jewelry donation, Pleasant Hill Dry Cleaners for the plastic dress bags, and all those who donated dresses and jewelry to make this happen!
This event gave a free dress to every Pleasantville girl who wanted one, in addition to a free piece of jewelry. Girls from surrounding communities, or women searching for a dress for our Prom Throwback (for Adults!) fundraiser coming up April 25th, could get a dress for $25.00. Originally we had planned to donate half of the proceeds from those purchases to Pleasantville’s After Prom, but after talking about it with our team, we decided all $400 we took in would be donated to After Prom. Why? Because we just love those kids, and want them to have an AMAZING time at Prom!
All dresses that were not given away or sold were donated to The Well in Knoxville, where girls can still go and shop for a dress!
We are so excited to continue to bless Pleasantville’s youth in more and more ways. We hope the girls who attended felt that we truly believe they matter to us, and to God. Watch the full highlight video here.
PvilleYI Interview: In Depth Today with Dr. Bob Leonard
On December 11th, 2019 a group of youth along with PvilleYI leaders were featured on Dr. Bob Leonard’s In Depth Today Radio show for KNIA/KRLS. The interview can be listened to in its entirety here.
A huge thanks to Jennie Koenig, Silas Koenig, Jury Ellis, Madilyn Rowson, Stacy Rowson, Emily Caulkins, and Elizabeth Goodale for contributing to this interview, and thanks Bob for thinking of us!
