FCCLA - Journey to Gold!

This past year for FCCLA (Family, Career, and Community Leaders of America) McKenna has worked with Baylee Palmer on a project to promote awareness for teen blood donation.  Their project started with them going to the hospital and typing and crossing their blood.  First step?  Determine their blood type!

Baylee ended up with O+ blood and McKenna with B+.  Unfortunately Garfield Memorial doesn't stock B+ - it's too rare - so McKenna held a bag of A+ instead.

 After their blood typing, they held an assembly to introduce the high school to the benefits of blood donation.  New laws allow 16 and older to donate.  The American Red Cross has a program called the Red Cord Honors Program.  High school students donating blood a total of 3 different times or donating 1 hour of service at 3 different blood drives will earn a red cord that can be worn at graduation.

The next step was to hold a blood drive!  McKenna and Baylee coordinated with the American Red Cross to hold the first ever blood drive for Panguitch High School students and faculty.  The response was incredible!  They had 33 donors!  Twenty seven of those were first time donors!  In fact the Red Cross had to shut the blood drive down before all possible donors could donate because they didn't bring enough supplies - they weren't expecting such a great turnout!

After all the work was said and done - Baylee and McKenna headed off to Layton for FCCLA state competition - where they won a gold! In all 15 students from Panguitch made the cut, the highest percentage of students anywhere that were going to compete in nationals!

Now comes the good part!  Because they took gold in state - they were able to travel with other FCCLA'ers from all across America to Orlando, Florida for a national competition!  Waking by 4 am and traveling to Las Vegas for a flight to Orlando sure made for one long morning, but these girls were up to the adventure!

And finally touchdown!  Orlando - watch out!  Panguitch has sent some of their very best!

A look at their cozy accomodations - the Rosenshingle Creek Inn.  They were pretty lucky this year.  They were able to stay at the hotel where the competition was actually being held.  Before they have had to walk or travel to get to the competition.