Rachel's Challenge

My friend, Gail, and I are sponsoring a new club at out school, Friends of Rachel. It is based on Rachel's Challenge which is based on the life of Rachel Scott. It's been an all day affair and tonight I go back for a parent/community meeting. Although I'm tired, it's been rewarding. We had 2 assemblies and not a sound could be heard from the students. Later, we had about 130 students to come to be trained for the club. What a wonderful turn-out! Of those 130, if we have 30 dedicated students, I know we can and will make a difference. My heart was touched by talking to some of the students who want to really get involved. The ones who are not the cheerleaders, the Student Council members, etc... - the ones who are often overlooked and ignored. These are the students we want in our club. I know teens often get a bad rap. I, however, am here to tell you that there are really good teens in the world just waiting to make a difference. Give them a chance!

From Wikipedia, I copied the following:

"Rachel Joy Scott (August 5, 1981 – April 20, 1999) was the first victim of the Columbine High School massacre, which claimed the lives of 12 students and a teacher, along with the two perpetrators, in one of the deadliest school shootings in United States history.
Scott has since been the subject of several books and is the inspiration for Rachel’s Challenge, a nationwide school outreach program for the prevention of teen violence.

Rachel Scott was slain while eating lunch with a friend, Richard Castaldo, on the lawn outside of the school's library. She was killed by multiple gunshot wounds to the head, chest, arm, and leg. Afterwards, her car was turned into an impromptu flower-bedecked memorial in the school's parking lot by grieving students.

Early news reports said that one of the gunmen, after having first shot Rachel in her leg, asked the wounded girl if she still believed in God, and that she had answered "Yes", provoking a second, fatal shot to her head at point-blank range. Some accounts attributed this version of events to Castaldo, though he later denied telling this story. Despite the controversy surrounding this issue, Rachel’s parents contend in their book, Rachel’s Tears: the Spiritual Journey of Columbine Martyr Rachel Scott, that their daughter was targeted by the killers and died as a martyr for her Christian faith, based on videotapes made by the teenage perpetrators in which they are said to mock Rachel for her beliefs."

We had 2 assemblies and not a sound could be heard from the students. Later, we had about 130 students to come to be trained for the club. What a wonderful turn-out! Of those 130, if we have 30 dedicated students, I know we can and will make a difference. My heart was touched by talking to some of the students who want to really get involved. The ones who are not the cheerleaders, the Student Council members, etc... - the ones who are often overlooked and ignored. These are the students we want in our club.