Home > About Us > Stories > 2010 Archive

BPD SRO’s and Students raise $$ for Haiti and food for Bellevue

When 11 college football players show up at a Bellevue high school gym to play basketball with a bunch of teachers and a cop or two, there’s has to be a real good reason. There was a good reason. Bellevue East School Resource Officer Banks came up with the plan as part of his FLOC (Future Leaders of Our Community) program.

FLOC was created by Banks a year ago and exists to pair high school students with middle school students before they get to high school. The older students help the younger ones with homework and they all get together to do community service projects. The Haiti fundraiser was the latest community service project the group took on. It raised about $1500 for Haiti hurricane relief and 7 boxes of food for the Bellevue Pantry.

Officer Banks says the overall goal of program is to get younger students around somebody positive, to alleviate the pressures when they get into high school. Part of that process is to have fun with the students. He pointed out that in addition to raising money for Haiti, the fundraiser upped the fun factor a little as well. "I thought it was a great success. Kids, parents, everyone who came had fun. Even the kids at the high school who usually get into the most trouble made a point of telling me thanks and that they had a great time."

Husker players who showed up to play bball were Ndamukong Suh, Matt O’Hanlon, Barry Turner, David Harvey, Menelik Holt, Maurice Purify, Wes Cammick, Phillip Dillard, Jake Wesch, Chris Brooks, and Andy Christenson. The football jocks took on Bellevue West SRO Larsen as well as 9 teachers from the two schools. Huskers beat the teacher team by 8.

Photo: Top, L to R, Doug Woodard, Tola Dada, Brent Gehring, Kris Kessel, John Schwartz, SRO Larson. Bottom: Ndamukong Suh.
Photos by Bellevue East Freshman Jillian Stiverson