First off folks, reserve your calendars for May 19th.
The Miss America and Miss America’s Outstanding Teen Organizations’ national platform is Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Young women from all around the nation raise millions of dollars, all #ForTheKids. Fundraisers are operated in many forms, whether it’s a 24 hour dance-a-thin or selling cookies. Each contestant has their method of fundraising, and I’m telling you mine.
Since I’m not 16 yet, I’m not legally allowed to visit in the hospitals, so I’ve found other ways to work with CMNH. I’ve attended dance marathons across the nation in order to try to do my part, but I have felt like I could be doing more. Each of those kids in those hospitals are fighting for their lives, consistently remaining to be a symbol of strength.
With a very short amount of time left in my year of service, (100 days as of March 10th! Where did time go?!) I partnered with the Wausau Skeet and Trap Club to do a different type of fundraiser for Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals.
How can a recreational shooting place possibly fundraise for CMNH? The answer to that is through education. I’ve realized through many discussions and observations as Miss Wisconsin’s Outstanding Teen, people do a lot of talking about guns. However, not many have actually had first hand experiences with a gun.
I know what’s going through your head right about now – Grace, what are you saying? Guns? Pageant Queens? Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals? How is this going to link together? Here’s the plan.
The operations behind this shoot is that businesses around the state of Wisconsin will sponsor squads of shooters for a 100 clay sporting clay course. Each squad will contain six or seven people, four of them sent by the sponsoring business, one being a club member, and one or two queens. The businesses shooters may vary with experience levels, and the same goes for the queens. To be safe and educate these people on how to properly handle a firearm, we have made sure that we can place at least one club member in each squad to help out.
Safety is the utmost priority, so because the purpose of this shoot is to educate and to fundraise, we have a time set aside for first-time shooters to learn the key details of a gun and everything they need to know to safely and properly handle a firearm.
How will the fundraising fit in? Each of the sponsored squads are a certain cost. All profit made that day will be donated to the Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals. Simple as that.
Overall, the entire fundraiser will be a blast. I know I’m certainly looking forward to it! We’ll be starting off with a check-in/meet-and-greet hour, then an hour will be spent educating and teaching the first time shooters about firearms. Afterwards, squads will depart to the course and begin the shoot. Once the course is completed, a sponsored lunch will take place. Following the lunch, we will be having raffle baskets and minigames over the course of the next few hours.
Join me and the members of the Wausau Skeet and Trap Club on May 19, 2018, to help children continue fighting their battle, and to learn something completely new. Take this opportunity to take a risk, try something new, and learn a little more about something so majorly controversial in the modern day society, all while fundraising #ForTheKids.
Grace Stanke
Miss Wisconsin’s Outstanding Teen 2017
