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Regarding students having enough money for food throughout the weekend, one method we find works very well is giving students $1.00 in profit for every pepperoni roll they sell. The team gets the remaining profit per roll. These are very popular - we sell them throughout the school year.
This money they earn from this specific sale is first used to pay off a student's activity fee, required prior to traveling. Any excess proceeds are then distributed by the parent booster leader to the students while on the bus heading to the competitions for use as extra food money. So the kids have an opportunity to earn additional spending money for trips. This is especially beneficial to students who come from poorer or struggling families. And it isn't a freebie handout - double bonus.
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What are pepperoni rolls? And I'm not sure that we could sell food as a fundraiser only because MA has become really stringent with the healthy eating intuitive (all the lunch rules and stuff changed this year too) and we're not allowed to sell candy bars or anything like that in the building due to the rules.
I do love the idea of the kids earning extra spending money for trips though - thats kind of a cool incentive for fundraising.
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One issue our team had dealt with religion. Some of the boys wanted to go swimming but a few girls couldn't be around them shirtless and also couldn't use the pool so that was something we had to deal with. We still allowed the team to use the pool but the mentors reserved judgement that if the particular students who couldn't use the pool were being left out (perceived or real) we would have said no swimming period. Again, our students are pretty good and genuinely like each other so we didn't have an issue but with larger teams it's something you might want to think about BEFORE angry parents call you.
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This is a good point - thank you!
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Use of cell phones on our team has gotten so bad that at most events we have a jar that all phones have to go in. The exception is each buddy group may have a cell phone so we can reach them.
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How does this go over amongst your kids? As I said, its not that we WANT to take our kids' phones away but I'm not sure how else to motivate them to get out of the stands if they're not scouting and go talk to other teams, check out the pit, etc.
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One thing that we learned from our trip to Atlanta in 2008 is have an id or reference card for each student that includes hotel information and adult contact numbers. We had a student get separated from us, due to a misunderstanding between the mentors and his parents, at the finale and he had to walk back by himself without knowing what hotel we were at or know any phone numbers to each us.
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Also a really good idea -- and actually really important! Thank you!