Paulding High School Wins Lead4Change Grant
Paulding High School’s Personal Growth and Positive Mindset class, taught by PHS teacher Emily Remaklus focuses on social emotional learning and leadership, recently completed their semester-long leadership project.
As a part of the Personal Growth class curriculum, students participate in a national leadership program called Lead4Change where they recognize a problem in their school or community that they want to help solve. This year the students chose to focus on raising funds for the Paulding County Veterans Memorial. The students had heard that the VFW was working on installing a memorial park to honor those who served in the armed forces and they wanted to contribute.
Lead4Change provides lessons on leadership that help students effectively implement a leadership project. Students who successfully complete the Lead4Change program and project receive a certificate, and the completion of the project can help fulfill graduation requirements.
Additionally, the program allows students to take the project a step further and apply for a grant to help fund their project even more. Grants up to $10,000 can be awarded through Lead4Change. Students need to create a one-pager describing their project, a video under 5 minutes long to submit, and a grant proposal. After reviewing the project and grant application, the Lead4Change organization determines if they will award a grant.
Throughout this past semester the students created various fundraisers including snow shoveling in the community for free-will donations, a bake sale at the last home basketball game, and selling Valentine bears during their lunch hour. Along with the fundraisers, students also were featured on Fort Wayne’s 21Alive News where they were interviewed about the project. This media attention helped bring in additional donations for the memorial.
By the end of the semester the class raised $1,016 through their fundraising efforts. It was also recently announced by Lead4Change that the students also won a $5,000 grant for their work which they will also be donating to the Paulding County Veterans Memorial.
Students who participated in the Lead4Change project include: Devyn Haller, Ameriona Stiltner, Karson Mudel, Jacob Harris, Xander Schwab, and Noah Pollock.
