Neal Wooldridge, far left, Vice President for Planned Giving for Oklahoma Baptist Homes for Children was our guest speaker Tuesday. Neal was presented a check for $1000.00 by club president Koorosh Zahrai, from proceeds of the 2017 Edmond Summit Rotary Sporting Raffle and Skeet Shoot. The funds will be directed to the clothing fund of the Edmond Boys Town Ranch to help provide new clothes for the young men as needed and as they enter school for the 2018-19 school term. Clothing purchased will be modelled by the boys at the annual awards banquet this summer prior to the next school term.
Boys Ranch Town (BRT) is a 145-acre working ranch located in a rural setting within the city limits of Edmond. The campus contains modern cottages, each with a capacity for eight residents and a married couple serving as houseparents. The family arrangement in the cottage models how a Christian household should operate. Each cottage contains a spacious living room, kitchen, and dining room for family style dinners. It also has a laundry room, four bedrooms, each with a private bath and an apartment for the houseparents and their family. In most cases two residents share a room and a bathroom.
Neal provided information on leaving a legacy to provide for care for young men and girls to try to assist in keeping them from getting lost in the DHS foster care system. OBHC currently cares for a little over 400 children through young adult age kids in family group home like Boys Ranch and crisis pregnancy centers for young girls kicked from their homes due to unwanted pregnancies. However, there are over 10,000 kids in the DHS system being cared for by foster parents and institutions who do not have the opportunities the OBHC can provide. For more information and articles on how to help go to: https://www.obhc.org/planned-giving
In the past 3 years, Edmond Summit Rotary has donated over $12,000 to benefit local area charities through proceeds from the annual raffle and skeet shoot and their other fundraising events. This is in addition to providing funds to Rotary International for Polio vaccinations globally and assisting in projects including building schools and providing clean drinking water and sanitation and medical facilities in impoverished countries.