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The event
A youth fundraiser, featuring Reneeˊ (Wall) Rongen of rural Fertile and her son Alex, will take place at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4 at Concordia Lutheran Church in Fertile. Dessert will be served, with free will donations accepted to benefit about 25 senior high youth attending the National Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Youth Gathering in New Orleans this summer.
The speakers
An accomplished author and motivational speaker in her own right, Reneeˊ is the international spokesperson for the Pay It Forward Foundation and also serves on the board. Alex is a 2009 Fertile-Beltrami High School graduate who attends the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management in St. Paul and has led three Students Today Leaders Forever (STLF) Pay It Forward tours for high school students. Together, they will talk about both organizations and the concept of just how simple it is to make a tremendous impact on someone's life with a kind gesture.
Pay It Forward Foundation
"The Pay it Forward concept has a direct connection with the New Orleans trip because the youth attending the gathering there will also be doing service projects to help people around the city," said Lisa Duckstad, chair of the trip's fundraising committee. "It all ties in together."
Catherine Ryan Hyde helped establish the Pay It Forward Foundation in 2000 after the book “Pay It Forward” was published and the movie of the same name was released. The mission of the foundation is "to inspire, promote and celebrate the adoption and practice of pay it forward principles of education, sharing stories and social networking."
Simply put, pay it forward means to do good deeds onto others expecting nothing in return, and if you are the recipient of a good deed, pass it on to others. In order to promote this concept, Rongen has had 1.5 million cards printed up for performers of the good deeds to leave with the recipients, most of which are currently in circulation around Minnesota and the world, although she has a number of them available for the asking. The card explains how to see the "ripple effect" of changing the world in five easy steps.
"I know these cards are getting around because there was an instance where I witnessed a good deed in action, complete with a tattered card, in Michigan," said Rongen. "It really makes you wonder where each of these cards is now and how many miles it traveled since the original good deed that placed it in someone's hands."
Visit the website www.payitforwardfoundation.org for more information about the organization.
The event
A youth fundraiser, featuring Reneeˊ (Wall) Rongen of rural Fertile and her son Alex, will take place at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 4 at Concordia Lutheran Church in Fertile. Dessert will be served, with free will donations accepted to benefit about 25 senior high youth attending the National Evangelical Lutheran Church of America Youth Gathering in New Orleans this summer.
The speakers
An accomplished author and motivational speaker in her own right, Reneeˊ is the international spokesperson for the Pay It Forward Foundation and also serves on the board. Alex is a 2009 Fertile-Beltrami High School graduate who attends the University of Minnesota Carlson School of Management in St. Paul and has led three Students Today Leaders Forever (STLF) Pay It Forward tours for high school students. Together, they will talk about both organizations and the concept of just how simple it is to make a tremendous impact on someone's life with a kind gesture.
Pay It Forward Foundation
"The Pay it Forward concept has a direct connection with the New Orleans trip because the youth attending the gathering there will also be doing service projects to help people around the city," said Lisa Duckstad, chair of the trip's fundraising committee. "It all ties in together."
Catherine Ryan Hyde helped establish the Pay It Forward Foundation in 2000 after the book “Pay It Forward” was published and the movie of the same name was released. The mission of the foundation is "to inspire, promote and celebrate the adoption and practice of pay it forward principles of education, sharing stories and social networking."
Simply put, pay it forward means to do good deeds onto others expecting nothing in return, and if you are the recipient of a good deed, pass it on to others. In order to promote this concept, Rongen has had 1.5 million cards printed up for performers of the good deeds to leave with the recipients, most of which are currently in circulation around Minnesota and the world, although she has a number of them available for the asking. The card explains how to see the "ripple effect" of changing the world in five easy steps.
"I know these cards are getting around because there was an instance where I witnessed a good deed in action, complete with a tattered card, in Michigan," said Rongen. "It really makes you wonder where each of these cards is now and how many miles it traveled since the original good deed that placed it in someone's hands."
Visit the website www.payitforwardfoundation.org for more information about the organization.
STLF
STLF was founded in 2003 by four Carlson School of Management freshmen, including Crookston High School graduate Brian Peterson, who now serves as the organization's co-executive director and director of operations and finance at its national headquarters in Minneapolis. STLF hosts Pay It Forward tours for students in middle school through college, with college students at the helm, that travel to several cities within a specific timeframe to do service projects. More than 300 tours with nearly 13,000 participants have logged in to date.
The STLF website (www.stlf.net) says: "We are an optimistic group of students who engage in servant leadership to create positive life experiences. With a mission to reveal leadership through service relationships, and action, STLF is engaging college, high school, and middle school students in service and leadership."
