An Evening for CASA

Last Thursday the Lubbock Community Theatre hosted CASA Kids for a performance of Alice in Wonderland. Let me just say that these students are so very talented and the costumes were fantastic. The cast and crew truly did a wonderful job!

My personal favorite part of the evening was watching the kids faces! They were completely captivated! One little girl was so excited to tell me that one of the cast members shared the same first name as her. She was more excited than I can express. She felt so connected to this young actress because of their shared name! The cast also did a wonderful job of making a personal connection with the audience. Another little boy told me that he really like it when, "the guy in the big hat looked right at me and made me laugh. I think he did it on purpose to make me laugh." It was so fun to hear and see the event through their eyes. The little girls sitting behind me talked through the whole performance, yet all of their comments were so very cute.

So here we offer a very special THANK YOU to everyone at the Lubbock Community Theatre for hosting CASA. It is a night these kids will not soon forget - especially since it was the first play many of them had ever seen!

Thank You Kiwanis

Today the Kiwanis Club of Lubbock donated $500 to CASA. What a wonderful & welcome surprise! The Lubbock Kiwanis Club is known for their charity work with children as well as the flags they put out around Lubbock on all patriotic holidays. Thank you so much for your generosity!

Summer at CASA

Things are staying busy here at CASA of the South Plains this summer!

Earlier this week Blue Sky hosted a fundraising event for CASA! It was such a fun evening filled with many familiar CASA faces and some good food! Thanks to everyone who came out to support this evening! It was wonderful to see so many of you there!

Today CASA participated in the Teen Pacesetters Camp hosted by the Volunteer Center of Lubbock. This allowed CASA the opportunity to tell middle school students about our work and how they can help CASA at such a young age. It seems that they gained a better understanding about our work, yet it was obvious that their favorite part was the candy.

The Lubbock Community Theatre will soon be hosting a CASA night just for our kids and Advocates. And we are busy confirming playhouses, dates, and volunteers for the 2010 Casas for CASA playhouse raffle in August. Keep checking back for photos and to learn more about what is happening at CASA!

GREAT Day at CASA

We just received our third playhouse confirmation since this morning! AppleBaker Construction will be joining with the builders mentioned in the last post for this year's Casas for CASA event. Like I said before, this year is going to be great! Get ready to buy your raffle tickets!

Casas for CASA

We at CASA of the South Plains are getting very excited about the annual Casas for CASA playhouse raffle coming up in August. Today, we had two playhouse builders confirm that they will participate. Betenbough Homes will be building a playhouse to be displayed in the South Plains Mall and Chiggerflat Playhouses (http://www.chiggerflat.com) will be donating one of their adorable playhouses to be on display at the United Supermarkets in Levelland.

We can't wait until August to show you each of the playhouses for the 2010 event! Get ready to buy your raffle tickets! This is going to be a great year for this event!

Office Depot

Yesterday, the newest Office Depot in Lubbock held their ribbon cutting celebration. In keeping with their Community Support mentality, Office Depot made donations to three local non-profits - including CASA! We are thrilled to have been the recipient of $100 donation as well as 100 backpacks for our CASA kids.

Thanks Office Depot for all you do for the Lubbock community!

Youth Celebration of Service

Today, CASA will be attending the Volunteer Center of Lubbock's Youth Celebration of Service luncheon and agency fair. This is such a fun event each year. Hundreds of middle and high school youth are honored for their service to our local community within the past year. It is always so inspiring to see how many youth are giving back and it provides hope that the future of our community is in good hands with these youth.
The Volunteer Center of Lubbock has several unique programs for youth which allow them to serve on some non-profit boards as well as give grants to local agencies by making the decisions from the application stage through the decision and presentation phase.
Last year, CASA was blessed to be the recipient of one of these grants chosen by youth. Additionally, during the agency fair in 2009 the Student Counsel came up to CASA and told us that they had been collecting cleaning supplies for us! We had no idea they had decided to do this! They came over to our office after the luncheon last year to present us with the items. We at CASA were so blessed by their generosity! The Roosevelt Student Counsel has since remained involved with CASA by helping at various other events.
Needless to say, we are excited about being able to attend and participate in the Youth Celebration of Service event again today.