Our January daytime SDA meeting will take place on January 2 and we are planning a service project at Ryther Children’s Center 2400 NE 95th Street. Ryther has 36 children in a residential program divided between three cottages. They range in age from 6-14, with generally a 4 year age span in a given cottage. On average, the kids have been in 9 different homes before they get to Ryther. They are there for a variety of reasons, but most have suffered severe sexual and physical abuse, and neglect, and therefore most have a range of mental health and behavioral issues including aggression, acting out, fire setting, running away, and other behaviors. Some diagnoses might be PTSD, ODD, depression, anxiety and ADHD. Most also have some sort of attachment disorder. Our plan is to make Prayer Flags with each of them to take back to their room.

You can help in one of three ways, or all three:

• Before December 28, we need people to donate any items from the list below. They can be dropped off at my house, or I can try to arrange for someone to pick them up. If you plan to be part of the work party, you can just bring them along with you.

• December 28, from 1-3 PM, a work party will meet at my house (7547 24th Ave. NE, Seattle) to cut paper, glue flags, cut ribbon, etc. to prepare for the activity with the kids. Each child will be making their own 5 flag banner. Three of the flags will be pre-made by us and two will be ready for them to decorate.  All the flags need to cut up at this work party.

• January 2, we need up to 12 SDA volunteers (6- 7 as a minimum) to be at Ryther to help the kids make their banners. The commitment will be approximately two hours. You will need to be there between 12:45-1:00 as we will begin with the children at 1:30. Please bring a sack lunch that you can eat as we set up for the kids. Although there are 12 in a cottage, all of the kids from each cottage will not attend, for various reasons. We will try to have all three cottages filter through in 1 hour as the kids have short attention spans. So, cottage A will come and leave after about 20 minutes at which time cottage B will come. There will still be a few kids finishing up from cottage A when the second group comes in and a few left from B when cottage C comes in. We will then clean up and head out for coffee at Top Pot–6845 35th Avenue Northeast– and debrief.

DONATIONS WE NEED:

ribbons–any kind, to tie the flags together
bright colored yarn, also for tying purposes
paper– 8.5 x 11 or larger

• solid color paper (bright)
• scrap book paper
• other decorative paper
  calendars with pictures for kids to cut out

glue sticks
felt markers
glitter markers
stickers

other ideas?

Please RSVP (bkuznetz@comcast.net) and let me know how you can help with this project. Although not everyone is needed to be at Ryther working with the kids, it would be great if everyone could contribute somehow–we need lots of paper and materials for the kids to decorate with.

Thanks!

Barbara and Suzanne