Our Community, Linden, Fenton, Holly
The G.R.A.Y.T
Leviathons are not just focused on the robot that they spend sleep-less weeks on, we
are highly supportive to the
communities surrounding them. We believe in not only helping our team, but
helping whoever and wherever we can. We have several sayings within our
team, but one of them is "We are a little team with a can-do attitude."
When a teammate's mother passed away from cancer, we organized a team to join the Fenton area's Relay For Life. This is a 24 hour event where money is raised for the National Cancer Society. By raising more than $900 we not only honored our teammates mother, we also honored many of our community's cancer survivors and hope-to-be survivors.
We encourage all teams to participate in
their regional Relay for Life. We had a tremendous amount of fun.
Listening to Joe sing Karaoke at 2:00 a.m. was a big highlight of the day.
Trivia games, side walk chalk drawing and several members *cough cough Ryan* being thrown into jail is
also memorable.
Like all papers around the world, our local paper contains a "hotline".
When several people in our community complained about US 23 being covered in debris
and littler, we sprang into action. Over the long summer weekend we picked up over 100 bags
of garbage. By adopting this portion of the highway and planning on keeping it
clean, we have a ongoing community services for years to come.
What a hurricane season it was for our friends on the Gulf Coast! After Katrina hit, our team did what it does best, and jumped into action. We contacted newspapers, TV stations and local radio stations and asked the communities to come help us assist the Red Cross. With everybody's help we presented to the Red Cross over $1,200 in just one days work.
Lego League! How much fun is that!? It is
hard for us to turn away kids who want to learn and have fun. Even though the
limit is ten kids, we have twenty overly excited-sugar-hyped-up-eager kids on our Lego
League Team. We
taught them programming, teamwork, timelines, science, math and (of course) the
wonderful opportunity to
meet and make a new friend.
We also want the world to know about Josh! Josh
is seventeen and is a member of our community. When he was just a few months old
he became very ill. As a result of that illness Josh became a triple amputee.
After recently reading about the plight of Josh and his home in our newspaper we
did our best to help them out.. One of Josh's biggest problems was that his
wheelchair would not fit through his bedroom door. He hasn't slept in his bed
for many years. Josh's house is also filled with black mold causing the floor to
start caving in under the
weight of his chair. We had to do something! So we organized a benefit called "Kids
Helping Kids". We organized our own Extreme Home Makeover and succeeded in
having Josh built a new home.
* We want to thank Sky Way Wheels for helping Josh get new wheels for his wheelchair. Sky Way Wheels rocks!
Our team also helped start the Mid-Michigan
Robotics Alliance. With this group it will make it easier to fund raise
money. Some groups in our area have large sums of money they would like to give
but do not want to give it to one team. With the formation of teams from the
area the sponsors are more willing to give. We do more than split money, we also
get together to hold events like the
Kettering Kick off,
FTC
competition and Lego competition events. We also want to help other schools start Lego,
Vex and FRC teams. We will be giving robot demonstrations around the area.