Happy New Year!

Happy Holidays FCCLA'ers! The new year is almost here! Can you believe it?! What a joyous time of year with friends and family. There are so many reasons to be thankful this holiday season. From seeing family members who traveled long distances to making traditional holiday goodies, each and every one of us were reminded as to why the holidays are a special time. And when it comes time to ring in the new year on the 31st, you'll have another opportunity to enjoy time with close ones to celebrate. New Year's Eve celebrations are a time to reminisce on the past year and look forward to all the great things about to come in 2013. As FCCLA members, we are responsible to lead by example and show our peers what it means to live a positive lifestyle all times of the year. With the possibility of "sticky situations" arising on New Year's Eve, we all need to be reminded of the blessings we have and the opportunity given to us as leaders. Lead others this New Year's Eve as well! Encourage your friends and family to stay safe while celebrating the new year. I hope you all have had a wonderful holiday season and look forward to seeing what the new year brings for FCCLA at the local, state, and national level. On behalf of the 2013-2013 National Executive Council, I encourage you all to enjoy this New Year's Eve safely. - Elliot Johnson, National President

Happy Holidays

Charity Service Options

Hello FCCLA'ers!

 I hope all of you are having a wonderful holiday season. This time of the year is best for discussing possible community service projects and activities. As FCCLA members, it is important for us to participate, as well as motivate our peers to participate, in bettering our community. From very small and simple actions to huge fundraisers or events, there all types of ways high school students can give back.

Common/Simple Ideas:

-Volunteer at the Special Olympics

-Soup Kitchens

-Local pantry

-Yardwork for senior citizens/nursing homes

-Picking up Trash

-Walking shelter dogs

-Volunteering at a library

-Help teach kids a sport through community

-Volunteer at a nursing home/hospital/child care center

-Host a carnival at a shelter with homeless kids

-Tutor kids with reading/writing/math

-Host a food Drive

-Baby blankets/supplies collection

-Do a giving tree (hang paper ornaments off a tree that say what to get, for example winter coat or diapers and have people take them, you help collect items)

-Toiletries collection

     However, volunteering can be as unique and fun as you make it. Maybe you’d prefer or better enjoy planning a fun event that would raise funds for these charities.

Unique and extremely fun fundraising ideas for any organization/charity:

-A benefit dance/Winter Formal etc.

-Powder Puff Football Game (Teacher Game/ Seniors vs. Juniors etc.)

-Donkey Football Game

-Walkathon

- Volunteers commit to working for an afternoon doing any odd jobs sponsors “hire”
             them to do.

-Reverse Raffles

-Talent Show

-Smoothie Stand

-Little Miss Pretty Pageant (Well-known boys dress up as girls and participate in a girly pageant)

- Have donors pay $1 a vote to decide which form of “torture” to inflict on your organization’s leader (i.e. dye hair, dress as a clown, trade a job for a day).

- Hold a spell-a-thon with each contestant collecting donations for the number of words they spell correctly. The top winners receive donated prizes.

- Participants ask friends and family to donate old jewelry they no longer wear and turn the gold in for cash.

-Coordinate with a store to offer gift wrap services during the holidays.

-Handcuff two willing fundraisers and let them lose when they raise “bail”

- Volunteers commit to shaving their heads if a specified amount is raised by a deadline

     Although we’re discussing charity in a time of giving, as FCCLA members, we must remember to give back to our communities all year around. Get a big group of your friends together once a month and try a new community service activity. Show your peers that giving back can be just as fun as going out and that one person or group of people can make a big difference! Passion for helping others truly is contagious. Remember, an act of kindness, no matter how small, is never forgotten.

          

                                                                                Happy Holidays, 

    

                                                                               Magda Hernandez                                                                                  

                                                                 National Vice-President of Community Service

Public Relations/Membership

     This week’s blog features Linsey Armstrong and Caleb Hearon, the National Vice-President of Public Relations and National Vice-President of Membership, respectively. The duo will share more about their office and their goals for the year.

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     FCCLA needs YOU to make your digital mark! There are many ways you can help promote and publicize the organization, especially on social media. Search the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America on Facebook and “like” our page to help us reach our goal of 12,000 likes. Follow @NationalFCCLA on Twitter and help us increase to 3,000 followers. You can also help us reach our goal of increasing views and followers of this blog by 5%. If you haven’t yet, be sure to download the FCCLA app!

     We all know there are many ways to describe the Family, Career and Community Leaders of America. It’s an organization that takes us “toward new horizons” and it’s the only Career and Technical Student Organization that has the family as its central focus. However, the description the leaders of FCCLA often prefer is the tagline, The Ultimate Leadership Experience.

     Repetition is a crucial part of promoting and branding the organization. When discussing FCCLA to students, administration, community leaders and elected officials, we encourage you to consistently reiterate the tagline. “The Ultimate Leadership Experience” is a powerful phrase that describes FCCLA. You can also promote this on social media!

     Only with your help can we make brand our organization and make our digital mark! Let’s all work together to spread the red!

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     Membership, something we all have talked about and all wish to improve. Of course, 200,000 plus members is nothing to scoff at, but our ultimate goal is to impact even more students through the Ultimate Leadership Experience! This year we have launched the brand new iRecruit membership recruitment campaign in an attempt to reach 213,000 members by 2013 and with all of your help we can achieve our goal. Through this membership campaign individual winners will receive an iPod touch, free NLC registration for Nashville this summer, and recognition on the national level! You can learn even more about iRecruit by following this link: http://www.fcclainc.org/content/irecruit/

     I hope you will work hard this school year at recruiting new members to make your local, regional, and state associations even better. One of the best ways to “spread the red” is using social media such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. to get your message out there. Let’s get to work this year and take FCCLA “Toward New Horizons” in 2013!

Share Our Strength

This week's blog includes activities done on the chapter and state level by some members of the National Executive Council to benefit our outreach partner, Share Our Strength!

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Orange Grove High School participated in the go orange week for Share our Strength. FCCLA members sold card pin ups for $1 each and decorated the hallways with them. The Orange Grove chapter also hosted a powder puff football game between the senior and junior girls. T-shirts were designed and the high school boys dressed up as cheerleaders to support their grades. Admission to the game was $3 or 6 canned foods. Fact about childhood hunger in America and Share Our Strength were announced during the game. The event raised several thousands of dollars! Both fundraisers were major successes because our FCCLA members were all very passionate and excited about the great cause!

                                                                                                                               Magda Hernandez

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My chapter is doing a "Dance-A-Thon" in the spring to fundraise for Share Our Strength. A Dance-A-Thon is when you have students try to dance from 6 p.m till 6 a.m the next morning. For every hour they go, they have sponsors donate money for Share Our Strength. We have Zumba instructors come, play Just Dance on Wii, and have a blast for 6 hours to raise money for a great cause!

                                                                                                                                 Elliot Johnson

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Childhood hunger is not something simple; however it has a simple solution. Here at Pleasant Grove High School in Utah, where I go to school, we decided to make a goal of $500 by March. So far we are well on our way. The Utah delegation’s goal is to raise $3.14 per member (get it?! Pi!). To help us get to our goal we started by bring Awareness to No Kid Hungry. We made a showcase right by the lunch room (there’s no way you can miss seeing this showcase, it’s big). We educated our school and then got to the fun of raising money. We started to sell Cotton Candy at Football games and our schools movie nights. We now are selling at Basketball games and sometimes during lunch. We are at $300 so far and so the hope is to rise more than our goal! (I’ll keep you posted). At Fall Leadership, we raised over $600. We had boxes where people put money in to pie a State or National Officer. I got pied 2 times. It was a lot of fun because we raise a lot of money in just two days.

Overall, Utah is doing a great job and so is my Chapter!

                                                                                                                                  Ashley Labrum