If you ever happen to go to Country Kitchen around 7:00 on a Thursday morning, you will find a group of men in the back drinking coffee. To you, it may appear to be old friends catching up, or work buddies getting their morning cup of joe before a long shift. However, it is something much more than that. It is the men of Creating Badger Builders (CBB), a group formed in 2022, including current city mayor Herb Pearce, with one similar interest: assisting young members of the community with their future careers.
During academic period Nov. 11, students in HOSA and EMT were called down to the lecture hall for a meeting where CBB members presented around $10,000 of supplies, consisting of a medical stretcher, ECG (electrocardiogram) simulator and blood pressure simulator that had been donated to their programs.
“It’s so satisfying and gratifying that our nursing, EMT and law program is growing,” principal Paul Weinheimer said during the meeting. “To say that a lot of our students are caught on fire with the want to go serve others and make their life that way, is the best thing that can happen. It takes a village to help you guys to be able to do that… it takes our community.”
CBB is purely voluntary and non-profit.
“Our program started about three years ago, and when it started it was about teaching the youth about trades,” volunteer Mike Olson said. “Not everybody can go to college. By teaching kids the trades, it will give them a foot out in the real world. Pretty much everyone in our group is in the construction trade and is either retired, a supplier, inspector or contractor.”
As their program began to grow and evolve, the members came to the realization that other CTE (career and technology education) programs outside of construction needed help due to budget constraints.
“Financial budgets are hard things right now with everybody,” Olson said during the meeting. “So that’s where the community comes in and helps. Lampas is a great community for that. We help as many programs as we can. We changed our bylaws last year so that from now on it’s not just construction, as long as it’s a CTE program, we will help them in some way, shape, form or fashion.”
Recently, CBB met with CTE Coordinator Elizabeth Haviland, and asked which programs needed help. According to her, the health and nursing programs were in need of the most assistance.
“She gave me this long list of things that she said they would like and help with their program,” Olson said during the meeting.
CBB used donations they received from the community to pay for the items.
“The one thing about the Lampasas community is they are so big in providing stuff for our students,” lead EMT instructor Ted Haviland said. “If the kids need it, the community gives it to our kids. They go above and beyond what a lot of other big city communities don’t.”
The $4,000 stretcher will be used by EMT students.
“The old stretcher we had is archaic,” Haviland said. “I’ve seen a lot of people hurt using it.”
Their prior stretcher was a model that hasn’t been used since the early 2000’s.
“[The new] one is pretty much state of the art, other than being non-electric,” Haviland said. “ It’s a manual, but it teaches my students what they’re going to use in a real ambulance situation.We started using it the day that we got it.”
Not only was their prior stretcher outdated, it also would smash students fingers often while operating it.
“It’s freaking awesome,” EMT student Taylor Anderson said. “It doesn’t smash our fingers and you can actually raise and lower it. It’s so cool.”
The other materials were donated for the use of the HOSA program.
“The health science program’s students, including myself, will utilize these materials to improve our health care skills by practicing and learning different techniques through the health practice tools that were so generously given to us,” HOSA president senior Kaylee Pentz said. “I would like to thank the community and everyone who made this amazing donation possible.”
On March 22, CBB will host their annual silent auction fundraiser that raises an average of $60-70 thousand.
“We allow each CTE program to bring three items to the silent auction and whatever money is made from those three items is theirs to do whatever they want with,” Olson said. “We want the kids to get out there and look at it.”
In the meantime, CBB will continue to meet every Thursday morning and plan new ways to assist young Badgers.
“This organization right here is what I live for,” Pearce said during the meeting. “I’d rather be doing this than anything. We’ve got a group of guys that’s almost turned into a family. Every Thursday morning for the last three and a half years, we get together, have board meetings down at the Country Kitchen, have a cup of coffee and we pray for you [students]. We think about you every Thursday morning.”
