May Day 2020: Over 600 May Baskets!
On May 1st, 2020, we handed out and delivered 600 May Baskets to our community! Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we adjusted our plans to be extra careful.
Volunteers put together and filled the baskets with candy and some flower seeds to plant!
We met at Shadle Park in Pleasantville and began a drive-thru May Day Basket pick up. Of course we dressed up in fun costumes and had music playing! Everyone needed a boost of HAPPY after so much time in quarantine.
After our drive-thru time ended, we left the baskets we had left at random homes around Pleasantville.
We had so much fun bringing back this fantastic tradition!
Dear Pleasantville Students
Dear Pleasantville Students:
We are so sorry that this virus has robbed you of your school year.
We are so sorry that you’ve had your spring sports stolen from you.
We are so happy, though, that you are HERE. We hope you see that there is nothing more important to this community than your health and well-being.
Yes, YOU.
YOU are more important than the traditions, the trophies, and the academic successes.
YOU are more important than our jobs and our wallets.
YOU are more important than our ceremonies and competitions.
YOU matter. Very much. Because YOU are not all of those awards and stats. They are only things you do, things you accomplish. You may feel stripped of your identity and your passions right now. But we beg you to see how important you are without all of those talents. You don’t have to be good at academics or sports for us to value you. Without any of those things, YOU still matter, exactly as you are.
Especially as you are.
It won’t always be this way. Soon you’ll be back to your subjects and sports. Back to the cafeteria and gym. Back to the smell of new pencils and whatever that stuff is that the custodian puts on puke. But until then, WE are rooting for you JUST AS MUCH right now.
You matter to us.
We know you’re missing so much. And especially seniors, we are praying for you as you navigate such an incredible disappointment.
The world will be stronger because of what the class of 2020 has had to overcome.
But it’s so important that you see that nothing is more important to us than YOU.
**If any of you need something, if you’re afraid, if you don’t feel safe at home, reach out and contact your school or send us a message***
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.
5th and 6th Grade Christmas Gifts 2019
On Monday, December 16th, our team delivered 100 small gifts to our 5th and 6th graders at Pleasantville Elementary. It is so important to us that kids this age know we care about them, and that we are looking forward to hosting events for them when they are in middle school.
Each gift contained some candy, a bracelet, a sticker, and a small faux diamond. This little gem was to serve as a reminder that they are unique and full of purpose. The boxes also contained a special note of encouragement, which you can see and read below!
We hope this small gesture made kids feel special and loved!
Christmas Party 2019
Hot Chocolate, popcorn, music, and gifts? What more could a kid ask for! On December 14th, 2019 we hosted our first ever Christmas party for 7th-12th graders. It was a blast!
This event was different than events we have done in the past. Rather than just being a hang out night, this event brought the kids center-stage for a series of fun activities including a Christmas Tree making contest, a lip sync battle, and a Christmas Q&A.
The highlight of the night for PvilleYI volunteers was handing out a gift to every kid. Everyone got the same thing: a brown box containing gummy bears, takis (chips), a PvilleYI bracelet, a PvilleYI decal sticker that says “Every Person Matters”, a few pieces of candy, a candy cane, a pack of gum, and a really cozy pair of LazyOne Christmas Socks! Every gift was wrapped and a bow was placed on top. Why go to all the trouble to wrap all these presents? Because unwrapping gifts is SO much fun!
Ultimately our goal behind giving each kid a gift is simple: They matter to us. And when people matter to you, you go the extra mile and show them that you care in tangible ways. God gives to us in such a lavish way. We didn’t really need the color purple, but He gave it to us anyway. We didn’t really need a singing bird outside our window, but He gave it to us anyway. These kids might not need these gifts in the same way that they need their survival needs met. But we gave them to them anyway. Because good gifts make life special, worth enjoying, just like a C chord or a chocolate chip cookie. It’s a small way to bring joy. And small things add up.
The youth surprised us all by counting to three and in a unified voice expressing thanks.
On Christmas God gave us the most beautiful gift of all: His Son, Jesus, the Prince of Peace. And we want to love the way He does!
Merry Christmas!
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!
CFKWLG 2019 Was a Blast!
On November 23rd we hosted our second “Competition for Kids Who Like Games (and also for kids who do not like games)", or CFKWLG.
Competing can be a lot of fun. Some kids are naturally tuned to enjoy athletics, while others are not. And that is OK! Take our co-founders for example. Emily loves an intense game of dodgeball or basketball. Jennie, however, prefers trivia and creative challenges. Both enjoy competing, but not in the same way.
We created this event to appeal to both of these personality types. Learning to enjoy winning and losing, understanding that playing by the rules makes a victory sweeter, and working together with others toward a common goal are all important skills kids will need as adults. At this age, kids still learn a lot through play.
We wanted kids to understand that in life they won’t be on a team full of people who are exactly like them. At work, and even in their families, they’ll have to learn how to let someone else on their team shine so they can all find success. One minute a team is cheering their teammate who won them the dodgeball game, and the next they’re cheering the teammate who earned them 3 points in trivia. Everyone contributes.
As youth arrived and signed in they were divided into four different teams at random, each team assigned a different color: Red, Green, Yellow, and Blue.
Teams each had two volunteers as coaches. Together they came up with their team names and their team battlecries. We encouraged them to be as creative and silly as they wanted to be!
The teams chose the following names:
Yellow Team: The Millertary (named after Colton Miller)
Red Team: The Rojo Toros
Blue Team: The Blue Ice Giraffes
Green Team: The Turtle Strips
The teams competed in a series of games. We choose games that athletes and non-athletes alike can find a way to enjoy including some trivia, a dance-off, and dodgeball. By including games that appeal to different types of personalities, we were able to give each kid on the team a chance to contribute to the points their team earned.
Note: We used “regulation” dodgeballs (because apparently that’s a thing). They are supposed to sting less when a player is hit with them and be more fun to use.
The winner of the CFKWLG traveling trophy this year was the Blue Ice Giraffes!
Kids ended the evening with some candy bars and time to hang out together.
Events like this encourage teamwork and friendship. Competition can be a lot of fun when you play fair and laugh with your opponents. We hope the kids learned a little bit about teamwork, too.
We had a great time! A huge thank you to all of our volunteers: Stacy Rowson, Kirsten Furnal, Greg Eichenburg, Clinton Wallace, Eric Goodale, Mike & Emily Caulkins, and Jennie & Michael Koenig. You can watch the highlight video below:
Post Game Party 2019
What an awesome night with a bunch of great kids! We invited 7th-12th graders to a post game party on October 25th, 2019. After the football game youth began flooding into the High School Cafeteria. When they arrived they signed in with our volunteers and headed in for snacks, drinks, and dancing!
One thing is for sure: there was a lot of laughing at this event. One of the highlights for us occurred during the song “Don’t Stop Believin’”. Completely on their own, the entire group circled up to sing the song. Then they came together in the center for the chorus. It was encouraging to see all of them in sync for a moment. Clicks faded, divisions fell away, and they were just one big circle.
We love doing events like these because we see so many smiles. Life won’t always be easy or fun for these kids. But it is our hope that we can offer some enjoyment, some laughter, some fun that will help outweigh the bad days. God loves us so much and freely gives us good things. He asks us to love others the same way. So what we love to give them is a few hours of happiness. For a little while they are just kids having fun, wearing funny hats in front of a camera, and singing at the top of their lungs. Loved dearly by God, by us, and by their community.
We want to thank all our volunteers for this event. We couldn’t do it without you! Thank you also to PHS for allowing us to use the school facility. Thanks to Autumn Fennewald at Sweet Serendipity Photography for taking photos at the photo booth. She has a great eye! Thank you to Cass Lester for DJing for us again. He knows how to get the crowd moving! And a shout out to the Booster Club for bringing over a pile of delicious pork sandwiches, the kids were thrilled and so were the volunteers!
Although this was a 7th-12th grade event, we had very few high school students attend. We sort of expected that, but we wanted to try one more time to keep it open. We are taking notes about these things and plan to make some changes to future events, separating the age groups and finding unique ways to bless the high school students in Pleasantville as much as we are blessing the Middle Schoolers.
You can see a highlight video below!
If you would like to donate to help us throw more fun events like these, you can learn how here!
And just for fun, here’s the prep video from Emily and Jennie as well! :)
5th & 6th Grade Pre-Game Party 2019
We had a BLAST on October 18th at our Pre-Game party for 5th and 5th graders!
We started things out with a few large group games. When a mountain of hotdogs that the Booster Club cooked up for us arrived we sent kids through the line for dinner. We served them hotdogs, chips, snack cakes, and their choice of caffeine free pop or water. The photo booth was set up for them to snap some photos, too!
For such a high energy group we knew we’d need some high energy games! We ordered dodge balls that are “regulation”, which apparently means they are supposed to throw better and sting less. They seemed to have a lot of fun playing! Kids were also welcome to choose not to play and just hang out with friends and chat. But most everyone played or laughed on the sidelines.
We had hoped to end the night with a super fun dance off, and the kids were amped for it! Our blue tooth speaker, which had been working just fine at the start of our night, malfunctioned and we had to finish with the basketball game knock-out instead. We were pretty bummed out about the music, we had some kids READY to dance! A better system and microphone are on our future shopping list. We need to be able to amplify our voices above such excited kids!
We also took a short moment to remind kids why we do what we do. We reminded them that we care about them, that they matter, and that God cares about them. God loves us lavishly, unconditionally, and asks us to love others the same way. Which is what we intend to do!
We want to the thank the Pleasantville Trojans Booster Club for helping us order the hotdogs and buns, and also for cooking them up for us. We were so thankful, and the kids loved devouring them. A huge thank you also to all of our volunteers and to those who donated money and pop to help with the event.
If you would like to donate to help us host more events for Pleasantville youth, click on the button below!
Middle School Dance Night 2019
On September 27th, 2019, 7th and 8th graders in Pleasantville danced the night away at the Memorial Hall. We had almost 80 youth attend this high energy event.
We supplied heaps of hostess snacks, every Mountain Dew flavor known to man, and of course water and bananas. We love the reaction we get when kids come to the snack table with their little velcro wallets or lanyard money clips. They shyly ask us how much an oatmeal cream pie and a Dr. Pepper is. When we happily tell them, “its free!”, they don’t believe us at first! Their eyes light up as they yell “Thank you!”. We just love that!
The feedback we received from the kids was overwhelmingly great. They loved the music selection. Cass went out of his way to find songs kids requested, even searching out the censored versions of certain requested songs to make sure the music we played was appropriate.
We had many opportunities to get to know the kids who attended. We made sure we told them how much we cared about them, and how much we believe they matter. We reminded them that God loves them, and cares for them too.
We also gave away a 1lb container of FLARP!, which for those who don’t know, is basically a fart noise maker and middle school kids lose their minds over it. Tommy Booth was the lucky winner!
We had a fantastic night and we are looking forward to getting to know these wonderful kids more and more!
Thank you to our volunteers: Eric Goodale, Chelsea Bender, Autumn Fennewald, Michael and Jennie Koenig, Mike and Emily Caulkins, and Chad and Stacy Rowson. Thank you to the City of Pleasantville for the use of the Memorial Hall. Thank you to Cass Lester for his DJ services. Thanks Pleasantville Schools for helping us spread the word.
Giant Angry Birds Game
What do water balloons, stacks of boxes, and 500ft sling shots get you? GIANT ANGRY BIRDS GAME! And we had FUN! The youth chose to split up in boys vs girls teams and battle it out by launching water balloons at each other’s box towers, trying to knock them down and pop huge water balloons hidden inside them. It was a ton of fun. Everyone got a bottle of water and an icecream bar in between games. When we were finished, everyone worked together to pick up every single water balloon piece in the grass. What an awesome group of kids!
And of course, it ended with a pretty epic water balloon fight!
Flag Football and More
On July 10, 2019 Pleasantville Youth Initiative hosted a flag football game/hangout at the park in town. Youth had a blast playing flag football and extreme paper rock scissors!
We ended the event by making sure these awesome kids knew how much we cared about them. We reminded that they mattered to us, and to God. We had a lot of laughs, and everyone wanted to stay longer!
4th of July Parade 2019
Did you think you saw Ben Franklin and George Washington dancing on a float in the 4th of July Parade? It wasn’t the heat…you actually saw that. It was us. And yes, we almost passed out from heat exhaustion but hey, we had FUN! Our great big float read “WE WANT YOU TO BE AWESOME”, and we DO! We loved being our silly selves and passing out a gazillion fidget spinners to the kids in town. Let FREEDOM ring!
Bet you never thought you’d see old George and Ben shakin it to “Firework”, did ya?
500 May Baskets
To celebrate MAY DAY we came together to make over 500 May Baskets!
Youth and volunteers punched holes in paper cups and used pipe cleaners to make a handle. We added popcorn, M&Ms, and some suckers in assembly line fashion. Students wrote encouraging messages on each basket.
Early on May first we delivered these to every student in the entire elementary school! We also left a shiny new pencil for each student as well. The kids were so surprised to get a special May Day gift!
We hope kids at Pleasantville Elementary School felt loved and appreciated!
Be YOU Middle School Events
On April 12th, 2019, two events were held simultaneously. One was for middle school girls, the other for middle school boys. At each event, youth were encouraged to shine uniquely as God has created them. We talked about practical ways to apply this to our lives, and leaders shared how God has taught them to value themselves through life experiences.
We also handed out the following printout to the girls group. You can read more about what we taught in this blog post!
