So very proud of Jeff!

I'm proud to be Mrs. Jeffery Sponseller for many reasons . . . here are just a few:

Jeff is the teacher sponsor for the Sophomore class as well as Interact club at Barron Collier High School. Around Thanksgiving time he decided to reach out to local families in need to make their holidays a little brighter.  With his student club connections, he had the resources to help him reach his goal. Jeff found that there was a local elementary school that was definitely in need of help and support. Almost all of the students at this school are on free or reduced lunches which basically means they can not afford to purchase even the relatively inexpensive lunches provided by the school. In addition something like one in ten of these students were considered homeless . . . in Naples Florida . . . let that one sink in for a second. These kids and their families are the definition of needy! Along with his students Jeff was able to do the following:

• Provided 52 families funds to purchase a Thanksgiving dinner
• Provided 300+ polo shirts/shorts for school uniforms
• Provided 150 shirts/shorts for outside of school wear (these clothes did not fit the school's uniform code)
• Provided many reward parties for the "PBS:Character Event" by spending over $1,100 for ice cream parties
• Provided 6 bike's (with helmets and elbow & knee guards) at Christmas time

Here are the photos of the bikes . . . 

The school had never before received this type of help or attention. Jeff's main contact at the school would walk up to him with tears in her eyes saying "thank you" over and over again. I was lucky enough to be there when they dropped of the bike's and to see the look in the kids eyes when they saw them was worth every bit of effort it took to raise the money to purchase them. 

Because Jeff and his students did such an amazing job at collecting these food and clothing items there were also able to give 300+ pounds of food to the St. Mathew House and 12 boxes of clothing to "Hope for Haiti". 

He didn't stop there . . . 

Months ago Jeff came home from school with a simple idea. He wanted to get a box together to send to his fraternity brother who is serving in our military in Afghanistan. I thought the two of us were going shopping to put together a care package, but Jeff had something different planned. He wanted to get his students involved. What started as a simple "care package" idea ballooned into something much bigger and better. As soon as Jeff put up the flyers below, supplies started coming in . . . and a lot of it! So much so that our local news station showed up to do a story on it! 

Here are the flyer's Jeff put up around school

Here's Jeff on TV . . . 

Here's Jeff with just two of the five shipments that have been sent out . . . 

And here's the breakdown of what's been sent so far . . . 

While Jeff was definitely the one person behind all of this, he had to rely on many people to help him accomplish everything. For starters he called on the local Rotary clubs, his Interact club is the student version of Rotary. Jeff was able to get the local Pelican Bay Rotary club to sponsor his club, but they did way more than just that. Jeff would show up to "rally the troops" and ask for simple donations to help his efforts and would walk away with extremely generous funds to help him towards his goal.

The Rotary club had never seen anything like it before and were very impressed with all that Jeff had done over the course of the past year. They were holding an "end of year" awards ceremony and invited Jeff and I to attend. We felt honored to be invited to such a fun "hawaiian luau" theme event. As the ceremony started the President started talking about the first award that would be given away and I immediately knew why were invited there, it was a night to recognize many people and Jeff was one of them. The first award was for the Non-Rotarian of the Year and is quite the honor and they gave it to Jeff after listing off all of his accomplishments. As he got up to receive his award the whole place gave him a standing ovation. It was unbelievable. But that wasn't all . . . they also gave him the Paul Harris Fellow recognition which is a huge honor as well. Again he was received with a standing ovation. I couldn't help but stand there, looking at everyone cheering on my husband, and get all teared up. After all the applause they asked Jeff to give a very impromptu speech, and if you know Jeff you know that he loves to talk, so this went off without a hitch. Finally after his speech, they presented him with plaque for being the Interact teacher sponsor.

Here he is with all of his awards . . .

To say that I'm proud of what he has done is an understatement. There are no words to explain how I feel about my husband. He is a good man and when he puts his mind to something, nothing stands in his way. I'm happy to say that these "projects" are not finished, they are on-going and will hopefully continue on for many years to come. Not only is Jeff a great husband and amazing father, but also he is an outstanding citizen. Good job Hun! I love you!