Sunday marked the first formal Adopt-A-Road Clean up. Pictured is: Board Member Deb Snow, Sci Guy Chad Lauritzen, Board Member Gabriel Vigil, friends Jeremy Herrera and his mom Della Herrera (not pictured Board Member Karen Greenfield). Photo by Bernadette Lauritzen
By BERNADETTE LAURITZEN
Executive Director
Champions of Youth Ambitions
We planned to kick off some new things as we get close to 10 weeks until Champions of Youth Ambitions turns 10. I got a little too excited to wait.
We recently celebrated the Community Asset Awards, wrapped up our collections for veteran and pet shelters delivering dog toys, treats and cards from Chamisa students. We even mailed cards to veterans, now retired from our Mail to Troops program.
This past weekend, we held our first formal trash pick up for the Adopt-A-Road program. C’YA Board Members and family members rounded out the team. Our area starts at the Strange Trio sculpture and continues to the Overlook. On Sunday, we picked up 14 tall-sized kitchen bags of trash and some recycling too.
Last week, we launched our 10th anniversary announcement, with an event at the SALA Event Center. They will sell tickets on-line for a June 4 celebration. The celebration returns to our first program Cookies and Conversation. You can learn more here.
If you prefer the old-fashioned way, tickets are $10 or $25 and vary in rewards to the buyer, while supplies last. Checks can be sent to PO Box 4741 in White Rock, tickets will be confirmed and held at Will Call. The event will take place from 4-6 p.m., ending just in time to head to those primary return parties.
Cookies and Conversation was our first inter-generational event with Los Alamos Middle School and High School students. The programs were low key conversations between senior citizens and always included cookies for when you didn’t know what to say. We attempted to revive the programs after the pandemic and use the idea as an ice breaker at community events. Our June 4 event hopes to have some original C&C seniors in attendance.
We thought it would be fun to involve the community by searching for members that would share their favorite cookie recipe, for a digital cookbook. We’d also love to have the story behind why the cookie is important to you. When I was a kid, my father worked at Walt Disney World and one of his co-workers made us cookies every Christmas. If she could only know how we treasured the day they came home.
We will unveil the plan to make the recipes available for a $1 donation and will offer a have a chance to take advantage of the celebration, without ever leaving your car, with Change for Change.
Until Covid, our Change for Change drive was away for the community to give spare change to show that every donation, no matter how small could create change. Could one cookie change the world, we believe it can do just that and we still have ways to continue.
Carol A. Clark of the Los Alamos Daily Post will allow C’YA to write an article for every business or organization who collects spare change in June. You can do it June 1-10, to mark our 10 years or continue it for the month. Those businesses/organization get free sponsorship of a plate of cookies for the gathering. You can email us at cya.org@att.net or call 505.695.9139 for more information.
Life is Good, really good.
