• Parent's Club a Big Boost to Chapter
• A Valentine Weave
• Service to Others Doesn't End
• SkillsUSA Week, Telling the Story

Parents serve food at Norris High fund-raiser

To help the chapter at Norris High School in Firth, Neb., parents of SkillsUSA members have formed a booster club.

The group has a formal schedule of monthly meetings to organize fund raising, community service and leadership activities. For the past five years, the boosters have helped raise scholarship funds for graduating seniors. Booster club parents are encouraged to send out donation forms to local businesses as well as to their own employers.

The boosters also hold socials, help with food at conferences, sell screen-printed T-shirts created by the students and offer input on school equipment purchases. Parents also put treats on the students’ lockers before state competitions. The club formed in 2000.

For Valentine’s Day, cosmetology students at Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, N.Y., weave pink extensions into customers’ hair for $5 per strand. Customers need appointments. Proceeds offset travel expenses.

When Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast in 2005, Brian Moser and his students at Upper Bucks County Area Vocational Technical School in Perkasie, Pa., took action. The construction technology and masonry instructor worked with school staff and a local church group to connect with families in need in the Mississippi gulf region.

During school breaks since the disaster, the Upper Bucks teams have been heading south to help rebuild homes. According to Moser (pictured front row, on the left), they will return in March for the fourth time.

To help spread the word about SkillsUSA, Bryant Abbott (third from left), an instructor at Cheshire Career Center in Keen, N.H., has taken his students to city council meetings. The mayor has allowed them time on the agenda and has designated one week in February as SkillsUSA Week.

(SkillsUSA Week materials can be found on the Advisor’s Success Kit (ASK) CD and the SkillsUSA Government and Civic Awareness CD. Visit: www.skillsusa.org/shop/ to order. For other resources, go to: www.skillsusa.org/educators/ideas.shtml.)