Within two months, they had collected more than 2,000 pounds of plastic lids, Heidi Vance said. Those helping the Vance family with sorting included students at Haley Elementary and Bishop Luers High School. “We got it so fast, we were emptying the drum about every couple of days,” Heidi Vance said.Īll of the lids also had to be sorted to clean out any unaccepted items, such as plastic silverware. She and her family set up a donation drum at her school for students to deposit their plastic lids. Sammie also received help from other groups, such as her Girl Scouts troop and zookeepers at the Fort Wayne Children’s Zoo. She contacted local businesses, such as pharmacies, to ask them to collect plastic lids for her and created a comic strip-style sign to explain the project. She collected lids at events, such as at the finish of the Fort4Fitness runs. Sammie asked Haley students to collect plastic lids at home and to bring them to school. He said yes, and she went all-out to get the bench. Sammie asked her school principal if she could launch a project to get a Buddy Bench for Haley. For every bench ordered, the buyer also has to provide about 400 pounds of recycled plastic lids - the amount needed to make a bench. However, additional searching led her to Green Tree Plastics in Evansville, which makes benches and other outdoor furniture from recycled plastic bottle and container lids and sells its benches for $225.
When Sammie asked about getting a Buddy Bench for her school, Heidi Vance’s initial investigation found sturdy benches cost about $900 each. Other schools scheduled to receive a Buddy Bench included Heritage Elementary near Monroeville, Little Turtle Elementary in Columbia City, Adams Central Elementary in Monroe, McKenney-Harrison Elementary in Auburn, and Bluffton-Harrison Elementary in Bluffton.
The foundation planned to donate Buddy Benches to Forest Park, Haley, Fairfield and Holland elementary schools and Memorial Park Middle School in the Fort Wayne Community Schools system, the announcement said. Each Buddy Bench featured a design created by a local artist. In August 2017, the AWS Foundation announced it planned to give 10 Buddy Benches to area schools in celebration of the foundation’s 10th anniversary, The News-Sentinel reported at that time. The Buddy Bench concept has been around for at least several years.Ĭhildren who feel left out or lonely can sit on the Buddy Bench to let other children know they would like to join in playing with someone else.
#Everyone has a story today show tv#
“I’ve been on TV a lot,” Sammie said, including some previous coverage by Fort Wayne TV stations. “I’m really anxious to do it,” said Sammie, who will travel there with her mother while her dad and three siblings likely will stay home.
Sammie said she’s only feeling one kind of anxious about being on the show. Sammie’s interview now is scheduled to be recorded in advance and broadcast during the Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb hour from 10 to 11 a.m. weekdays on Fort Wayne’s NBC, Channel 21.2. NBC broadcasts “Today,” which airs locally from 7 to 9 a.m. “Today” show staff contacted the family after Heidi Vance sent them information about her daughter and her Buddy Benches project. Sammie will be interviewed about her project during the “Today” show’s “Everyone has a Story” segment, her mother, Heidi, said. What started as an effort to get one Buddy Bench for her school has exploded, with people donating enough for three benches at Haley Elementary and Sammie’s approach spreading to other schools in Fort Wayne and across the country. “I’m lonely sometimes, and I do see other kids who are lonely,” Sammie said last week. Fort Wayne third-grader Sammie Vance set out to change the world, and her progress has contributed to her making an appearance May 24 on the NBC television network’s “Today” morning show.Īfter learning about Buddy Benches during her Vacation Bible School program last summer at Blackhawk Ministries, Sammie, now 9, came home and told her mom she wanted to get one for her school, Haley Elementary in northeast Fort Wayne.
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