BY ELLEN KURT ASSISTANT NEWS EDITOR
The Jenzabar Foundation presented one of seven 2008 Student Leadership Awards to Wartburg Nov. 13 for its involvement in Feed My Starving Children.
“That was a great honor to be recognized. The CEO and the head of the foundation kept telling us time and time again that they were just completely blown away by everything Wartburg is doing. Like, ‘we wish we had more money, so we could grant you guys more than one grant, because you guys have seven stellar applications, but this is the one that popped out to us,’” student coordinator Randon Ruggles said.
Each nomination had to be made by an institutional member of the college. Fred Waldstein, director of the Institute for Leadership Education, decided to nominate Feed My Starving Children with help from Dan Kittle, director of the Center for Community Engagement.
“This was an excellent project which involved a large number of people from the campus community as well as a large number of people from the surrounding area. It was a great example of community collaboration to address a significant need,” Waldstein said.
The nominations then went to the Jenzabar Foundation. The Jenzabar Foundation is an arm of the Jenzabar company that produces higher education software like my.wartburg.
Jenzabar headquarters are in Boston, Mass., with regional offices across the U.S.
The foundation reviewed each of the nominations from the 200 campuses across the country that applied and decided to honor Wartburg.
“The foundation is honoring seven student-led campus groups and activities that have made a significant impact outside of their institutions of higher learning and have exemplified a commitment to making a difference in the world through community service, either through ongoing activities or through the completion of a project during the 2007-2008 academic year,” according to the Jenzabar Web site.
Through the award, Wartburg received a $5,000 grant. It will help pay for this year’s Feed My Starving Children event.
About half will go to defray administrative costs. The other half will go in the budget to help defray the cost of the whole thing.
“(Because of the grant), we will be able to concentrate our efforts on the fundraising for our event and raising the awareness that there are over 10,000 children in the world that die each day from starvation related problems,” coordinator Jean Buckingham said.
Wartburg sponsored Feed My Starving Children for the first time this past March as an alternative during Spiritual Emphasis Week. A Christian band or a speaker is usually on campus during this week, but the committee decided to take the money they would have been spent on those and put it towards paying for Feed My Starving Children.
Wartburg was the first college to undertake this event. In order to hold the event, they had to make space for the three days of packing, raise money in order for each meal to be packed and recruit an army of volunteers.
“We were so successful that we had over 540 volunteers from both Wartburg and the surrounding community, packed 108,000 meals and raised over $21,000,” Buckingham said.
Because of the large response to the first Feed My Starving Children pack, it will be held again this year May 3 - 5.