Madie Ronnfeldt, Blair Preston, and Jayden Vetick
Our community studio project consisted of slightly renovating and improving the concession stand at the Lyons-Decatur Northeast football field. This project is important to the community because the concession stand is used frequently between different sports and activities. It will also be utilized more by more people as we are co-oping with Bancroft-Rosalie in the upcoming fall. The different tasks we undertook included improving the electrical work, fixing the door to the drink cooler, purchasing two visually appealing candy stands, and prevent pests from infiltrating by installing a door sweep. This project will be beneficial for the Lyons-Decatur and Bancroft-Rosalie communities for years to come.
We had two main fundraising events for our project. The first event we held was the chili feed at the basketball game of Lyons-Decatur vs. Howells-Dodge. We raised the majority of our money through this. This particular fundraising activity was a great contribution towards our goal, and also made the community aware of our project and goals. Not only this, but we also sent out donations letters to members of Lyons and surrounding communities. These fundraising activities helped us pay the costs necessary for renovating the concession stand as well as purchasing other necessary attributes. The donations of our fellow community members, and others, are very appreciated. Our project would not have been successful without all your help.
Max Christensen was vital in the success of our project. He was responsible for the electrical work we needed done which contained improving electrical circuits and providing us with bright LED lightbulbs. He also provided us with different ideas on how to save energy in the concession stands. We appreciate the respect he showed us, as he treated us as customers and not as students. Lastly, he greatly helped us by providing a discount to our bill. We also received assistance from Chesterman’s Coke Company. They were vital in helping us replace the broken door on the drink cooler. Even though they could not work in the snow, they came as soon as they could which was appreciated. Last but not least, Bryan Frahm helped us greatly throughout our entire project. He was able to open the door for us, let us borrow tools, gave us handy tips, and even assisted in installing our door sweep.
One of the many challenges we faced was the weather. We could not get work done in the deep snow and it was hard for those we hired to work in the snow and frigid weather as well. Another challenge was time. When we were originally given the assignment of completing a community studio project, we were planning on redoing the Crow’s Nest above the home-side football field stands. As a few weeks passed, we realized that this project would be much more than we could handle. Doing Community Studio has helped us see and understand the reality that, sometimes, we are not able to do everything. The harsh reality is that we have limitations, and some jobs are better left to people who are more qualified. We learned about the values of time frames and also working together as a team to create an equally as helpful alternative.
This project will benefit our community by providing a more updated football concession stand and possibly even raising profit because of the fact that the facilities are more welcoming and more visually appealing. People from other communities deserve to feel welcomed when they enter ours, and we wanted to try our best to allow this to happen. With the successful completion of this project, we hope to enhance the way our schools and communities are viewed. We thank anyone who has helped us along the way.
