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STLF In the News

Check out this recent newspaper story from the Des Moines Register on a Tour stop in Iowa.

Newspaper: Des Moines Register
Author: Aaron W. Jaco, STLF
Date: October 29, 2009

A group of Minnesota high school students visited Indianola last week as part of a community service tour.  More than 30 students from Duluth, Bemidji and Barnum helped spread mulch at Indianola Off-Leash Dog Playground on Oct. 16, as part of a “Pay it Forward” trip with the nonprofit group Students Today Leaders Forever.

The tour left Duluth on Oct. 14 and returned Oct. 18 with stops in the Twin Cities, Iowa and Missouri. The do-gooders spent nights in community centers and churches.
“It might sound lame to some people to say, 'I’m going on a trip to do community service and sleep on the floor every night,’ but I really enjoy it and to me it’s important,” said Hayley Wright, 18, a senior at Duluth Central High School.

Another Central student said the trip doubled as a study session for how to ease tension at their high school.  Duluth Central High School is set to close in spring 2011, sending half of its student body to Denfield High School and the other half to East High School, said Rachel Kerr, a Central senior.  “We want to bring back some of the ideas we learn here and help to unite (the student body),” said Kerr, 17. “There is a lot of tension in the schools right now, and we’re going to have to ease that when we get back.”

Students Today Leaders Forever started in 2003 as a project by University of Minnesota students, and has since spread to other areas of the Midwest, said Marie Renckens, a sophomore at University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Renckens, 19, was one of five college leaders to accompany the high school students on their trip. She and two friends, who were also trip leaders, plan to start a branch of Students Today Leaders Forever at their college. “I wanted to do a high school tour to get a feeling for it,” Renckens said. “It’s been great. The (students) seem so eager to get things done.”

Prior to visiting Indianola, students stopped at the Feed My Starving Children nonprofit organization in Chanhassen, Minn., and helped bag enough food to feed 30 starving children for a full year, Renckens said.

While in Indianola, the students stayed overnight at Trinity United Presbyterian Church, where they were delighted to sleep on a collection of couches.
The tour was set to continue to Lee Summit, Mo., where students would perform a talent show at a nursing home, and on to a food bank in Kansas City, Mo., before the bus would turn around and head back to Duluth.

“Everywhere you go there’s a need for something,” Wright said. “And everywhere you go there are people willing to help.”

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