Equipping Young Men to Serve Others |
 As America’s soldiers place their lives in harms way, Rawhide’s About Face Community Service Corps is responding to the needs of military families who are awaiting the return of their loved ones. John, a seventeen-year-old Rawhide cadet, (pictured at right with the family), stated, “A lot of people who get into trouble don’t have the opportunity to see what happens when they do good works. I never really had the opportunity to directly impact a family that I met personally.”
Chris Dreger, the wife of a brave service member and mother whose family received much-needed help stated, “The cadets’ work made a huge difference in my life. Rawhide is an organization that is out there changing our communities.” The cadets hauled and stacked three trailers of wood for fuel this winter from Waupaca to her home in Kaukauna, and also cleaned the yard area and eaves troughs on the house. |
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 John eagerly shares how a project to assist one military family had a significant impact on his life, “Rawhide gives you the opportunity to directly impact people through these service projects versus something indirect like picking up garbage on a highway. Here you get to immediately see who you are affecting, and that makes all the difference. I feel better about myself because I am doing good for the community. Seeing how happy people are when you do good things for them is going to push me all the harder to serve others when I leave Rawhide.”
Ed O’Brien, Rawhide’s Project Coordinator explained the benefits of this project, “Our military theme in the About Face Program gives us a natural connection to service families. We felt that assisting a military family whose head of household was deployed would be a great way to teach the young men how to be good Americans. They have the opportunity to see firsthand the actual sacrifices these families make to serve our country.”
Rawhide learned of service families in need through the Support Group for Deployed Military Men and Women. Since speaking to the group About Face youth have delivered wood for heating fuel to other military families and will start a roofing project for the Dreger family shortly. O’Brien stated, “The biggest benefit is the heart change Rawhide cadets undergo from the goodwill they feel when they see the burden lifted from these families. It literally turns their lives around.”
John remarked, “Being that he’s (David Dreger) out there fighting for our freedom made me work all the harder; it made me want to do my best job.” John was the January Student of the Month at Rawhide and has a goal to enter the armed forces upon graduating from high school. |
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"My wife Chris told me what a great job your boys did. You can’t imagine how reassuring it is to me and other soldiers to have Great Americans like yourselves helping my family.”
God Bless,
CW3 David A. Dreger
Iraq
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