For the RAGE Leadership Project I knew right away what I wanted to do. I wanted to help the Valley Humane Society.  Besides soccer on the U11 White Team, I have a love for animals, especially cats & kittens. The first thing that I did was to look on their website to see their wish list of the items that they needed and printed it out.  Next, my Mom and I visited the Valley Humane Society to ask questions like is the wish list current or what events are coming up. We found out about a Christmas event where you get a tag from their Christmas tree and it tells you about something  that they need. We picked two tags, one said to buy a heating pad for kittens and the other said to buy Friskie’s Party Mix, also known as a cat treat brand. We then bought the two items and put them under the tree. Afterwards, I played with the kittens and the cats. After Christmas we checked the wish list again to see what they still needed. They still needed cat toys, cat treats, and dog and cat food. Next, I collected donations right outside of PetSmart. We ended up with five 10oz  packs of Friskie ‘s Party Mix, or cat treats , one bag of cat food, one bag of dog food, and lastly, two mice with catnip inside and two bouncy balls, one that makes tweeting noises and one that lights up.  In March I get to be a Junior Volunteer and will enjoy helping out at Valley Humane Society.  I hope more dogs, cats, kittens, and puppies will get adopted very soon!  

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. 

For our Rage leadership project, Noelle Marceno and I chose to support the US Marine Core Reserve Toys for Tots program. The purpose of this charity is to provide toys for under privileged children. The success of this program is dependent on people’s generous donations of new, unwrapped toys to be handed out to kids during the Christmas season. Without this program, many of these underprivileged kids would not have presents for Christmas.

U11 Orange – Toys for Tots

Our goal was to get as many donations as possible. To achieve this, we wrote a letter containing the program details and gave it to all the people we knew. We asked them to donate a toy and told them we would pick it up from their house and would deliver all the toys we collected to the Marine Core reserve center. We collected three huge boxes of toys! This meant we could help brighten the Holiday season for a lot of kids.

Toys for Tots is a fantastic nonprofit organization. It made us feel really good to help out kids who are less fortunate than we are. We are so glad we choose to support Toys for Tots. We hope you decide to support it next year.

By: Victoria Frentz, U11 Orange

Hi my name is Tiara Lewis and for the community service project I made fleece blankets for the children of Children’s Hospital Oakland.

To start out I went to the fabric store with my mom and purchased blanket kits. We got many different kinds of blankets: kids, teens, animal, cartoon, and sports.

My mom and I went to Children’s Hospital Oakland after the holidays because lots of people come in around that time and I felt it wouldn’t be as special. When we got to the hospital I was nervous and didn’t know what to expect. I met all the nurses who were so happy to see what I had made for their patients.

 I came to the first room and opened the door, there was a little girl and she was the cutest thing ever. All the nervousness went away and I handed her a blanket with a smile on my face. I gave a blanket to a teenage boy who was not able to talk and could not move on his own, but I handed him a blanket and he smiled big when I gave it to him. Next, I gave one to a little boy who was pretty badly injured.  It was hard to look at. He didn’t want to take it and only wanted his mom because he was in a lot of pain. I left the blanket on the end of his bed and his mom seemed veryhappy about it. Before we left that night the nurses brought me back to his room to peek in and he was laying down in his bed cuddled up with my blanket! That made me really happy that he enjoyed it so much. I gave blankets to many other patients, but those were the one’s I remember the best, the ones that still make me smile as I’m typing this. The nurses at the hospital were more than nice and enjoyed my visit also. They told me how hard it was for their patients to be alone and scared in the hospital and how much this would mean to them. I didn’t think that giving a blanket to someone could mean so much, but after I left I knew it did. Doing this project helped me realize how fortunate I am and when you are fortunate in life it is important to share with others and help people out who may not be as fortunate as you are. 

Tiara Lewis U14 ECNL
　

Posted: 2/20/13

Allison Hunter

Five of us from U12 Premier worked together to complete our community service project for the RAGE Leadership Program.  The five girls are:  Allison Hunter, Allison Jenezon, Ashley Cole, Kate Hottinger and Kylie Racer.  We decided to do a project to help the local Valley Humane Animal Shelter.  As a group we decided to make blankets for the dogs and cats that are waiting to be adopted.  We also decided to collect donations for the shelter. 
On a Saturday after one of our games we went to Valley Humane and talked to them about our project.  They had just received 8 rolls of fleece and were very excited that we had 5 girls that could help cut and tie the fleece and make blankets.  Additionally we had already purchased fleece for blankets.  In all we made 49 blankets!  Now every cat will have a blanket to keep even when they get adopted.  To help pay for the fleece we bought we sold mistletoe to friends and family and raised enough money to cover the cost.
Trader Joe’s donated 50 brown bags and we printed a wish list from Valley Humane to attach to each bag.  We delivered bags to friends and family and asked for donations.  In all we collected 28 bags of pet supplies, 4 large bags of cat food, a scratching post, 7 bags of cat litter. $125 cash donations and gift cards to PetFood Express.  From now on, Valley Humane Society will have plenty of blankets and supplies! 

Allison Jenezon

Hi my name is Allie Jenezon. I am from the U-12 Premier team and I took part in the Rage Leadership Program with Kylie, Ashley, Kate, and Allie H. For our community service project, we decided to focus on the Valley Humane Society. We all got together and made blankets for the animals. In order to pay for the blanket material, we sold mistletoe door to door. We also asked family, friends, and neighbors for donations for the Valley Humane Society. We collected many bags filled with cat toys, dog toys, food, kitty litter, and cleaning supplies. We also collected cash donations. The last thing we did was to deliver the blankets and donated items. We even got to play with the animals in the shelter. The people at the Valley Humane Society were very grateful for all of the hard work we did. We were proud of our accomplishment and glad we could help a worthy organization.

Ashley Cole

During the holiday season many animals that do not have a home are forgotten.  My leadership team chose to help the Valley Humane Society to make the holidays better for animals that do not have a home.  We worked as a team to figure out what we were going to do to help and then how to do it.  We used different ways of communicating to work on the project.  In addition to helping the animals, I learned many lessons.
My leadership team had a meeting to decide what we were going to do for a project.  Everybody had a chance to give ideas for the project and we made the decision as a group.  Once we decided on what to do, we talked about it via email, text messages and meetings.
During one of the meetings we decided we would make blankets and get donations of things that the Valley Humane Society needed.  The Valley Humane Society gave us a list of things they needed.  We put this list on paper bags and gave them to our family and friends.  We also sold mistletoe to raise money to pay for the cloth to make blankets for the animals.  We had another meeting after a game and made the blankets.
When the project was done we had gotten a lot of donations for the Valley Humane Society and made a lot of blankets.  I learned many lessons doing this project.  I learned how to work as part of a group and listen to ideas that other people have.  I also learned how to share my ideas with other people.  Finally, I learned how to get a project and idea done on time while still doing other things I had to do.

Kate Hottinger

Completing our community service project for the RAGE leadership program was a unique experience.   Our group had five people. During the leadership classes we decided together to do our community project to benefit animals in need.  There were several different places to donate and we decided to select the Valley Humane Animal Shelter because it was a smaller facility and one of the parents knew the director of the center.  During the last two sessions of the leadership program, we started to work on what we could do for the project.   We started the planning for our project during these sessions.  We all had good ideas and we worked well in class.   It was nice to know what we were working on before we left the leadership classes because part of our planning was already done.

            As a group, we decided to make fleece blankets for the animals, we weren’t sure how many or what size.  We also knew that we wanted to collect pet supplies and donations for the animals.  We all met after one of our soccer games and cut and tied pet blankets.   We were able to get more fleece donated from the shelter so we made more blankets on our own time.  In total, we made 49 blankets.   They were different sizes and prints.  Some were very little for baby kittens and a few were larger for medium sized dogs.  To cover the cost, we sold mistletoe door to door.  One of the parents had a friend who donated bushes/branches of mistletoe to our group.  We pulled them out, cut them into little bundles and tied red ribbons on the tops of each small branch.  We raised almost $70 to pay for the fleece and other supplies.  

            We also went to Trader Joe’s and asked to have them donate brown paper bags.   We attached a flyer of the shelter’s wish list on each bag and we passed them out to family and friends to fill.  We also asked for cash donations.  I collected a $100 from cash donations and several bags of supplies.  We all met at the shelter to drop off our donations, they were very grateful.  It was amazing to see how generous people were when it came to donating and helping out the animals and our project.  The shelter allowed us to visit all the animals and we spent a lot of time with the dogs and cats in need.

            Community project work is hard because it takes time and planning.  Not all of the work is fun even though you are with your friends.  At times making the blankets was tiring because of the time it took to make the blankets.  It was also hard to schedule a meeting time that worked with all of our schedules.   In the end, when I saw the actual animals in the shelter, it made me realize that all the hard work and time was worth the effort.  I think the project helped me become a better leader because at times it can be challenging to have the same goal and to stay on task just like on the soccer field.   You also have to stand up when someone isn’t doing the right thing and leading the team in the wrong direction, just like when we don’t listen to how our coach wants us to approach a game situation.   I also learned how there are different ways to be a leader from the class, a leader isn’t someone that speaks the loudest but it can be someone who leads by doing the right thing quietly.  I also liked the feeling I had when I left the shelter, I felt that we made a difference.

Kylie Racer

I had a lot of fun doing this leadership project and it taught me a lot.  We chose this project because we all love animals and we don’t like to see them homeless and not getting a lot of attention.  We continued planning our project after the classes by getting together and talking and meeting.  We planned that we were going to make kitty and puppy blankets, and donate food, toys, medicine, litter and much more. 
Yes, we were successful! We collected over 40 big bags of stuff for cats and dogs.  Also, we made more than 40 blankets.
I learned that not everything revolves around me, and to help others.  I am healthy and I have a home; not all animals and people are healthy and have homes so I’m very happy I had the experience to help.  My favorite part of this project was to see all the animals and giving them attention.  Also my favorite part was basically the whole project!  The hardest part was probably collecting everything and telling everyone what this was for and what we were doing.  I’m so happy to have gotten this opportunity to do what I did and I hope I will do it again some day and maybe next I will adopt a little homeless animal.  Thank you so much for giving me this opportunity to help and to get closer to my 2nd sisters (my soccer team!)  I LOVE LEADERSHIP.

Posted: 1/7/13