CORE Butte FFA members hard at work making candy flowers.
“Community service is the action one takes to not only better their community, but better themselves.”
My name is Natalie Reed, and I am from Paradise, Calif. Growing up in a small town, I witnessed the impact community service can have on people and their surroundings.
This inspired me to take on the leadership role as the president and creator of the CORE Butte FFA community service committee. Throughout this amazing journey of running a community service committee, I have gained valuable experience.
We’ve done multiple projects, including dog toy tying, veteran donations and a canned food drive. My favorite service project was making Valentine’s Day candy roses for a local nursing home. This project stood out to me because it showed the impact one person can have on so many people.
To prepare for this project, the committee had to think of an objective it wanted to fulfill. Ultimately, we wanted to bring joy to people who might be missing out on Valentine’s Day. That’s when I thought of donating to Arbor Post Acute Nursing Home in Chico, Calif.
Then, we came up with the idea to make candy roses and Valentine’s Day cards for the nursing home residents. After finalizing our plan with the committee, we called the nursing home to discuss our ideas, and they were thrilled to hear high school students taking the time to make others in their community happy.
They shared that we would need to make 280 candy flowers and cards to ensure everyone could experience our love. We got to work, as we only had a few weeks to complete this project.
We started by gathering the supplies needed to make the candy flowers: a skewer stick for the flower stem, two Hershey Kisses as the flower bud, cellophane to give the kisses color, and floral tape to give the stem a green color and secure the flower.
For the cards, we cut colored paper into hearts, and each committee member wrote a handwritten note saying that they were loved and that we hoped they had a fantastic Valentine’s Day. We spent the next two weeks assembling the cards and the roses.
As we approached the deadline, we realized we still needed to make 100 more roses in just a few days. However, we also had the opportunity to involve more people in our project and get some help with our flowers. We asked our school’s floral class for help assembling the roses. They worked together and made more than 100 roses in just an hour.
Asking for help with the flowers saved us a lot of time and showed us that it is okay to ask for help. After receiving help from the floral class and lots of hard work and hours put in by the committee, it was soon Valentine’s Day and time to deliver the flowers.
As I pulled up to Arbor Post Acute Nursing Home, I was greeted with friendly gestures and smiles from not only the residents but also the staff. I walked in with a huge bag full of flowers and cards and then gave all our flowers and cards to the front desk. They were bursting with joy when they saw the handmade goodies made by hardworking high school students. They assured me they would deliver every flower/card to all of the residents who lived in the nursing home.
After this incredible and rewarding experience, we saw what a big impact people can have on not only their community but themselves as well. This experience helped not only me but also helped hundreds of other people feel loved and appreciated during the season of love.
This experience taught me many important lessons, such as how to organize meetings, how to convey information effectively from one person to another and, most importantly, that anyone can have the power to make a difference in people’s lives—all they need to do is have faith, courage and determination within themselves, and anything is possible.
