Benefit set for Key Club-CASA backpack team-up

The Havre High School Key Club is teaming up with Court Appointed Special Advocates to put together backpacks filled with items for foster children, and people will have a chance to contribute to the cause Thursday when they eat at a local restaurant.

The Crunch for a Cause Fundraiser will be held at Taco John’s in Havre Thursday from 5 to 7 p.m. Fifty percent of all purchases during the two-hour span will be given to the Key Club to help raise money for the backpack program if the purchaser says they are donating.

The backpacks — 10 have already been distributed and 30 more will be before the year is over — are divided into three age categories and will be packed with school items such as notebooks and pencils, as well as day-to-day things like pillows and blankets.

The fundraiser has been spearheaded by Havre High student Jessica Otto.

A CASA press release says, “It all began with one young lady, a statistic, and a simple question. After encountering a story about foster children, shocked by how often such youth — who are so similar in so many ways to her and her friends and classmates — move from place to place, Jessica Otto wondered, ‘What can I do to make their days just a little bit brighter?’”

Otto said she attended a Key Club convention in October in Lewistown and got the idea to apply for the Youth Opportunity Fund. The matching grant was awarded and a check for $2,000 arrived February. Thursday’s benefit is to raise the rest of the matching funds.

Key Club members buy the backpacks and the items that go in them. Once filled, Otto takes the bags to District 4 Human Resources Development Counsel, from where CASA representatives distributes them to children.

CASA is a nonprofit organization that enlists volunteers to  intervene and help an abused or neglected child. They navigate through the courts and the tunnels of laws and regulations with the intention of helping stop the destructive pattern in the child’s life and thus set them on an one more assuring.

Key Club International was founded in 1925 and is the oldest and one of the largest service programs for high school students. Key Club it is a student-led organization whose goal is to encourage leadership through service to others.