SaddleBrooke Community Outreach Happenings – February 2015

Volunteer at work; no experience necessary.

Volunteer at work; no experience necessary.

Annual food drive

Nan Nasser

SaddleBrooke Community Outreach will hold its annual community food drive to benefit Tri Community Food Bank on Saturday, March 14. Last year the communities of SaddleBrooke and the Ranch collected over 19,000 pounds of nonperishable food and $19,000 in cash to help the people in the Mammoth, San Manuel, Oracle area known as the Tri-Communities.

How does this work? Volunteers serve as captains for each unit, place a flyer in your tube prior to the event and on the morning of March 14 your food will be picked up at the end of your driveway by one of those volunteers. This year the donations will be sorted and repacked at SaddleBrooke Country Club (HOA1). The pickup will begin at 8:00 a.m. and the entire amount of food received is ready to go to Mammoth by late morning. If you would like to volunteer to help with this project contact Rich and Joan Roberts at 825-7577.

For more information about SBCO go to our website, www.community-outreach.org.

Tutors needed now!

Come on, SaddleBrooke residents, SaddleBrooke Community Outreach could use your help. We have an urgent need for tutors at a couple of local schools and we need volunteers to help kids improve their math and reading skills. It’s really easy; you only have to put in a few hours one day a week (more if you want) and you’ll have the satisfaction of making a difference in the school lives of these students.

So here’s what we need:

* At Mountain Vista Elementary School in Oracle there is a severe shortage of math tutors for Tuesdays. Tutors help out in the classrooms when no teaching is done—the period is totally devoted to working on problems to shore up students’ math skills. Call Skip Brauns at 825-9655 or email him at [email protected] and he’ll be glad to fill you in.

* Also at Mountain Vista Elementary we need tutors to help students improve their reading skills. Kim Campbell is the coordinator and she can be reached at 488-7380 or [email protected].

* At Coronado K-8 in Catalina math tutors are required for grades three through five. Robert Springer is the contact at 548-1763 or [email protected].

A word about Common Core: not all classrooms are teaching Common Core but if they do, there is nothing difficult about it that requires special training. After you hear a teacher’s lesson you will be able to tutor the math. So far we have not had a single problem having volunteer tutors handle Common Core math.

So there you have it; a way to help your community with just a small investment of time. Step up and make a difference.

Products that participate in the box tops/labels program.

Products that participate in the box tops/labels program.

Collecting labels and box tops for education

Nan Nasser

SBCO Collects Labels for Education and Box Tops for Education

Emilie Siarkiewicz has reorganized this collection to benefit schools in our service area based on goals, wish lists and their own efforts to collect the labels and box tops.

Labels for Education has been in place for 41 years and has provided $114 million in merchandise to participating schools. This began with Campbell Soup Company and has expanded to Pepperidge Farm, Swanson, Bic, Post and Pace. These labels accumulate as points for art supplies, athletic equipment and academic supplies.

Box Tops was started in 1996 by General Mills and includes Green Giant, Hefty, Hanes, Progresso, Scott, Boise, Ziploc and Land O’ Lakes. Box tops coupons are worth $.10 each and the cash can be used for anything the kids need—playground equipment, field trips and books. A school can earn up to $20,000 with these little cardboard coupons.

At the moment there is a container at Suite L in the commercial center in SaddleBrooke. The SBCO office is open Monday to Wednesday from 9:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. Emilie is getting permission to have other drop off points in SaddleBrooke and at the Ranch. Surely you must use one of the above products! Cut off the label or box top and begin saving them. Do note there are expiration dates on the box tops.

For 1,600,000 points a school could get a four door minivan! You can make a difference!