Monday, April 28, 2014

April Blog Post

Blake Andrews
WOW, it's already the month of April! This school year has gone by very fast. I just want to take a moment to reflect on our project with CARE and feel good about all that we have accomplished. We still have a long way to go for April, but we have a plan in place. For the month of April we are finally hosting out fundraiser event for CARE! It is called "Dogs on Campus". At this event we will be providing students and staff the opportunity to play with hogs from CARE. We will be accepting cash and wish-list items for CARE. We have put out flyers as a group, had the Dean of Students send out a mass email to all students, and provided a powerpoint slide for the commons. We have advertised this event heavily. It should be a great success! After we do this event, all we will have left for Summit is out final presentation. I can't wait to tell people about our experience with CARE. It has been amazing!

Mitch Daniel
This year has gone by so quickly, never a dull moment in 629. By far my favorite year in college so far. A big part of that is due to my hilarious roomies and great housemates. Personally the greatest accomplishment might be the fact that we have "gotten along" so well for so long. I am so proud to have lived in the 629 aka home. My housemates have dominated the RLA competitions. Best Door Decoration, best funny video, swept the Cribs competition, and made up two of the four survivors after the zombie apocalypse. We are sorry that we will have to break up our dream team with the girls upstairs and take our talents to College Park next year, but we are ready to make an impact on that too. In the community we have made many more meaningful impacts. One of our big contributions to Castaway Animals Rescue Effort would be the huge number of hours we combined for working. Added all up it would be five straight days. Besides that we added to their pet care resources and added to their budget. Im so glad that we could give our time to such a deserving organization like CARE!

Logan Presscott
As our time at CARE is winding down I feel like my group is making an even bigger impact on my community. Last week, we hosted an event at Drury where a few dogs were brought to campus for the rest of the students a faculty to play with and walk as a way to bring in donations and make CARE become better known at Drury. The day after we hosted this event, one of the dogs, Rex, who was at the event got adopted! Not only did the dogs have great time at the event, in order to get away from the shelter for a while, but the students who showed up all had a great time as well. I have seen so many dogs come and go from the shelter and I learned so much about the shelter and just how much volunteers mean to the CARE staff. After volunteering this semester and becoming close to many of the dogs, I plan on returning to the shelter as much as I can to continue to make a difference.

Jamen Helton
Working at CARE this semester has been great. I have gotten to know so many new animals and people alike. I have found that working at CARE was definitely not as easy as I initially thought. You really need to take time to put in good work so the shelter can function. This month we had our big event for CARE- "Dogs on Campus". This event was a fundraiser where we brought 3 dogs from the shelter to Drury and we were able to have students and professors alike donate multiple items as well as play with the animals. This event was a big success we were able to take some donations for CARE and allow the students of Drury to enjoy some company before finals.



The Team (plus Tux)


 DOG PILE!


 Blue Skies, Blue Shirts, Full Hearts


"Place Donations Here"

Monday, March 31, 2014

March

Blake Andrews
In the month of March, we have been able to take some great steps in fulfilling our goals for CARE. We have had the opportunity to meet with our community advisor to discuss some possibilities of fundraisers we could do. We decided on doing an event where our advisor would bring some animals to Drury and students could play with them. We would not have a fee, but donations would be welcomed. I think this could be a really great event! Currently we are trying to set up a meeting with our faculty advisor so we can set up a time and date. Once we do this, we plan on spreading the word by posting flyers around campus. I also hope that our faculty advisor (Dr. Julian) could possibly send an email out to let people know also. Currently we re having a hard time setting up this meeting time. We all have very different schedules. Once we get things going though I feel like this could be a huge success! I have completed all 15 hours.

Mitch Daniel
This month has been a decisive one. We finally got to meet with our new community advisor at CARE and begin the conversations about volunteer times. She has been very accessible to us, answering email and texts the same day. This is very helpful for us especially with our crazy schedules. For example if a class gets canceled unexpectedly we could contact her and ask if we may volunteer during that free time. This benefits that shelter as well because those are the times that they need help the most and we are typically not able to volunteer. Another significant thing about this month is that while in our group meeting we finally decided on what we would like our semester project to be. We first discussed what the shelter really needs and what could we provide them. We kept going back to the fact that they just don't have the all resources that they could need. This lead us to begin brain-storming ideas for a fundraiser. We tossed a few ideas around until we landed on a project that we heard about some organization doing on campus last year. We decided we would do a Puppy-Play-Date. We would bring in some puppies from CARE and for a donation students and faculty could play with them for as long as they like. It would be stress relieving fun for Drury, socializating fun and time out of a cage for the dogs, and hopefully a considerable donation to CARE. We are all looking forward to this event.

Logan Prescott
When I went back to CARE for the first time since first semester, I noticed several differences in the shelter. First there were about 30 new dogs in the shelter that I had never seen before. The shelter looked overcrowded for once. So overcrowded that dogs had to be put in the back on display instead of out front where the visitors can see them. It reminds me every time I volunteer of just how many dogs really need a home in Springfield and that they are all deserving of one. We came up with a great idea this semester on having a play day at Drury with the some of the dogs and cats of CARE. Students at Drury would come and play with the dogs around lunchtime and donations would be given to the shelter if they choose to do so. This is a amazing opportunity for the students of Drury to get to know the CARE animal shelter and to get to know some of the animals we get to work with every day.

Jamen Helton
Working at CARE this semester has been great. Our new community advisor has been fantastic at working with us. I feel like her presence at the shelter has been a pleasant surprise after we weren’t quite sure what to expect. I really feel like I am apart of the shelter and I am working towards something. This semester has been awesome so far after completing around 6 hours I am looking forward to getting to the shelter more often and giving my services to them. We haven’t really done anything differently than first semester except for the fact that we are planning to host a fundraiser and are very hopeful and are excited to put it on as well as help the shelter to be the best it can be.

Wazzzuuuppp???!!

Thursday, February 27, 2014

February Post

Blake Andrews
For the month of February, I have already completed a lot of my hours for volunteering. In the fall semester, I went to the Springfield location. This spring semester I have been going to the Ozark location. I like the Ozark location a lot. It is a lot better than the Springfield location. There is more room for the animals and more space in general. I have also been able to make some great relationships with the staff there. This semester we have a new community partner, Anna. We have not met, but have been texting her to set up volunteer times. Right now I have twelve hours completed. Once I am done with my hours, I plan to focus on how we can use the budget to help CARE. This is where my focus will be this semester and hope to make something happen.

Mitch Daniel
This semester started out very busy academically and athletically. I have not yet had the opportunity to visit either location of CARE. In the next few days I plan on making my first visit. I will use my time at CARE to continue the good work that we did last semester and use my experience from last semester to focus on the things that needed our help the most. One of our main goals for this semester is to plan some kind of a fundraiser that we could use to raise money for the purchase of the items that CARE has requested through there wish list.

Logan Prescott
 Coming into the new semester I am ready to get back into the groove of once again working with 
the CARE. First semester was an amazing experience working with all of the dogs with most all of 
them becoming adopted as time went by. I am hoping that for this semester there will be even more 
adoptions from both of the CARE locations and that we will continue to make an impact working with 
the shelter. For this semester, I am hoping that we will get to work with the Ozark locations since we 
did not work with them as much in the first semester and because there are more dogs and cats there 
due to a much larger facility that there is in Springfield. Again I am looking forward to this semester and working with the dogs again.


Jamen Helton
I have found working with C.A.R.E. has really helped me as a person. Knowing how working with C.A.R.E. has really helped me along with my group members. This semester has already brought change with our C.A.R.E. advisor no longer being at the shelter. Learning how to work with our new advisor has been an interesting, but not bad experience. Our new advisor has been very good about getting us hours as well as communicating with us. I feel like the change while unexpected will be a welcome addition to our experience. So far this semester I have only been able to make it to C.A.R.E. a few times and am really looking forward to working with our new advisor and all of our new friends at the shelter.
Stylin' and Smilin'

 Cool Runnings


*SLURP*

"Pick me, Pick me!"