Key Club spearheads project for foster children

Jessica Otto, 16, is spearheading a Havre High School Key Club project that aims to fill backpacks with necessities available to foster children and young people in need.

The project, with an estimated initial cost of $4,100, will be running primarily through the Havre Key Club and Court Appointed Special Advocates - CASA.

Project coordinators said they want to produce a minimum of 40 backpacks or diaper bags, filled according to age and gender. The birth to 3-year-old bags will include items like baby bottles, diaper bags and sippy cups; the 4- to 11-year-old bags will include activity books such as letter and coloring books as well as pillows and cases, and blankets; and the 12- to 18-year-old bags will include notebooks, toiletries, pillows and cases, and blankets.

Otto applied for a Youth Opportunity Fund grant through Key Club International. She said the grant can provide up to $2,000 and she expects to know by Jan. 1 at the latest if it will be awarded.

Fundraisers for the project will be coordinated after Nov. 17, but, as of now, nothing has been solidified, Otto said.

She added that organizations and businesses are encouraged to support the project. Otto said she will leave it up to the businesses and organizations to decide how they want to contribute and that it would make sense for their involvement to be according to the nature of their organization. For example, the library could donate books and Bullhook Community Health Center could donate toothbrushes, she said.

A press release about the project says they plan to put donation boxes throughout town, where people can drop off items like backpacks, notebooks, pillows, pencils, crayons, markers and blankets.

Otto, who is a Havre High student and part of the Havre Key Club, said she got the idea for the project after she went to the Key Club Youth Conference in Lewistown Oct. 7 through 9. She said she was talking to her mother and the project was born out of desire to do something for the community.

Otto said the goal is never considered complete because there will be a continual need.