For our leadership project we went to Kids Against Hunger to help pack food for kids. We invited some teammates and friends to help pack food with us. When we got there we put on our apron, hairnets, and rubber gloves; then we got started.  First we watched a video on needy kids in Hatti. (That is the place we would be sending the food.) In the video Kids Against Hunger gave food to the kids unfortunately  some didn’t get any; so this challenged us to pack food for everyone that was in need. First they taught us how to pack the food, and what to put in it. We each had a different job, and to remember the order we were supposed to put the food in the plastic bag we made up a song. The food was healthy and provided with protein. Some of the jobs were: holding the plastic bag, then putting in the wheat, veggies, protein powder, and rice. After we put everything in we handed it to the person who weighed it, then we handed it to the sealer who had to seal it, and finally put in boxes to send to Hatti. In conclusion we loved packing for the kids that are very hungry, and can’t wait to pack again.

This winter Haley Roundtree, Isabella Adamos, and Addyson Mapes participated in the RAGE leadership program. They were all very excited to be selected and have the opportunity to learn how to improve their leadership skills and complete a team project together that benefited the community. The three girls play on the U13 Orange Soccer team for Coach Trisha Gonzales. For their leadership project they decided to raise money to donate to the Red Cross in order to help the survivors  affected by the typhoons in Hayian, Philippines.

 Money was earned by having a bake sale. The bake sale took place on the weekend at Fallon Middle School and captured the attention of those attending and participating in club games.  People had a chance to purchase cookies, brownies, hot chocolate and candy canes. In just one weekend of selling baked goods, the group raised over two hundred dollars.  The hope is that the donation, coupled with other resources from the Red Cross can help at least 20 people by providing them needed food and shelter.  

The team immediately knew they wanted to help this charity when they first heard of the tragic difficulties the people of Hayian were faced with.   Many families were displaced when their homes were destroyed.  Thinking about what this might mean and the suffering that these people were faced with was humbling.  They related to the children and thought about how confusing and sad it must be to have constant reminders of not being able to attend school, play in their neighborhood or see their friends.  “Raising the money for the people in the Philippines made me feel good”  said Haley Roundtree.  Isabella Adamos shared, “I had a lot of fun making the brownies, and I’m glad people were willing to buy them.”  “I’m happy about the money we raised and the results” said Addyson Mapes.  They all agree that Leadership has taught them to give back to their community and  show people that every little bit that they do can make a big difference in someone’s everyday life.    

My name is Maille Smith, a u11Orange1 player, and I participated in the Soccer Leadership Program 2013-14. At the end of the program we were asked to do a community service project. For my part, I decided to give back to my old school Gingerbread, by offering to work in a few of the classrooms that I first attended school at age 4. I offered to work on my 4 half days off from 5^th grade in November when we had conferences. I was given the opportunity to work side by side with some of my old teachers, who welcomed me back with smiles. It was very fun. They put me to work aiding in projects, setup and indoor play, reading, teaching, outside play, and clean up. My old teachers appreciated that I was there to help and were very nice. The kids were pretty wonderful too. I met and played with two French red-headed twins who are 3 years old and who didn’t speak much English! Lots of the little girls loved to play with me, which made me feel great about helping. I also was able to read to them and they actually listened to my entire story! I found that no matter what I did each ½ day I worked, I had fun and was helpful to others but it really challenged me to build my patience, negotiation and communication skills.

I loved working at Gingerbread and am scheduling more volunteer work there in February/March 2014 on my ½ days with school!

Ever since the first day, we knew exactly what we wanted to do. We, (Lauren and Jennie), wanted to do a project to help kids who didn’t have the privilege to play soccer. We decided to collect old and new soccer supplies and give them to the third-world countries. The supplies were received from members of the Pleasanton RAGE Soccer Club, San Ramon Indoor Sports, and also people we know.

            We started by contacting Soccer Pro and asking where they donate their supplies because they do this service also. They gave us the number of the guy and we called right away. Now that we had our donation center, we needed to get the supplies. We set up a bin in the Rage offices and started collecting on December 9, 2013, and stopped on January 20, 2014. It was a huge success! Lauren had to go empty the bin every week!

            In December, we had a meeting with the owner of San Ramon Sports, asking if we can have a bake sale and have a donation center for a day. He said yes so a few days later, we set up a table in San Ramon Sports. Lauren made cookies, brownies, peppermint bark, pumpkin bread, and brought the table-cover. Jennie brought cookies, brownies, and made signs. We also had our friend, Sydney, help us out by baking cupcakes and she even stayed to help run the bake sale! So many people bought treats from us. A lot of people donated supplies and money too. By the end of the bake sale, we had almost $200 to spend on new supplies.

            The next week, we all went to Sports Authority and Target to buy new things that people didn’t donate much of, like socks, shin-guards, shirts, shorts, and accessories. After we finished our whole project, we ended up with 73 cleats, 66 soccer balls, 26 shin-guards, seven bags, 40 pairs of socks, 70 shirts, 29 shorts, five sweatshirts, two sweatpants, and 15 accessories. That’s a total of 333 supplies!

I’m sure we were happy to work this hard and we hope we made many under-privileged kids joyful.

Jennifer Waldo & Lauren Russell

U14 Rage Premier

Rage Leadership Project

We are the Rage U11 Grey team. In our group we had Hope Bergmark, Clare Beer, Olga Merkadeau, and Ella Camp. We thought of many charities, but since we all love animals we decided on helping the East Bay SPCA for our community service project.

After the first meeting for leadership our group thought about having a bake sale and selling lemonade the next day. So we decided to meet at one of our houses to prepare. That morning we met up, got our supplies together and headed over to Val Vista. We set up our stand and spread out the baked goods. Next two of us decided that we should go out on foot and sell to the people on the field. There were many generous people who bought lots on treats or made donations, however one person stood out and gave us a twenty dollar donation and told us to have a treat. That day we raised $118. At the next meeting we decided that we should have one more bake sale. We met up at Val Vista again and we decided that we should only make the treats that sold the most from the last bake sale. We sold to many different people and informed them about the SPCA. We raised around $300 total for the SPCA. We looked at the SPCA wish list to find items that the shelter needs. Two months later we went to Pet Smart and they gave us an amazing discount to help us reach our goal.                          

Once we bought all of supplies for the dogs we drove out to the East Bay SPCA.

We brought in our donations and they thanked us for all our hard work and donated supplies. Next they invited us to visit the dogs in the shelter and feed them treats. It was such an amazing experience and we can’t wait to do it again. In all we donated $400 worth of pet supplies for the dogs.