During the past academic year, BWNA has been a donor co-sponsor of the Sparrow Club project at Beaumont Middle School. Sparrow Clubs are part of a national nonprofit organization founded in 1992 in Washington state—today headquartered in Bend—that offers young people a way to help children with substantial medical needs by doing community service. The model is simple. It starts with a group of sponsors willing to help fund a Sparrow Club at a local school. In addition to BWNA, Beaumont Middle School Sparrow Club sponsors include a couple of neighborhood Les Schwab Tire Centers, OnPoint Community Credit Union, and the Joseph E. Weston Public Foundation. The “Sparrow” adopted by Beaumont’s club is a 4-year-old boy named Grayson from Arlington, Oregon, who was born with a serious form of spina bifida and severe hydrocephalus. He had his first surgery when he was 15 hours old to enclose an exposed spinal cord and has had four brain surgeries since, the first when he was just 11 days old, to place and regulate a shunt to relieve fluids. Nonetheless, Grayson has developed into an enthusiastic, happy-go-lucky child who is lively and active despite leg braces and wheelchair. He can live a long and productive life, but he will need many more surgeries and extensive physical therapy along the way. The students at Beaumont got to meet Grayson and his family at an assembly at the school last January. A short video about Grayson and the Sparrow program was shared with Beaumont students at that assembly and is available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yabrHldO_qI.
The final step in the Sparrow Clubs model is for Beaumont students to volunteer for community service projects. Each hour of their charitable service earns $10 from sponsors to help Grayson’s family pay for his medical bills and therapies. Beaumont students racked up 317 hours of service, more than enough to purchase a state-of-the-art wheelchair for Grayson. At a June 4 recognition assembly, students Meghan Cavallucci (33 hrs, including Irish dance instructor and library volunteer), Maija Rosenquist (25 hrs, including babysitting and library volunteer), and Wren Grabham (21 hrs, including baseball umpire and assembly setup) were awarded honorary plaques by BWNA VP Kathy Campbell. Beaumont MS was one of 15 Portland schools participating this past academic year, and that number increases to 25 schools for 2019-20. To become a Beaumont sponsor, contact Laura Queen at LQueen@sparrowclubs.org or call Laura at 503-740-0615.