Little Wound School, of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Needs Your Help
Little Wound School is a 501(c)3 non-profit school located on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota. We have approximately 800 students. Over the last three years our budget has been cut by approximately 3 million dollars. Students need our services, but we can't provide them because we lack the funding. This is why we're turning to you for help.
STUDENTS NEED YOUR HELP NOW!
Our Little Wound School wrestling team has not had a home wrestling match since 2004 because of an unsafe wrestling mat. The mat has cracks, folds, and tears. It can cause severe injury or death due to compressed spots and head trauma.
Wrestling is an important sport to many students. "Not everyone can play basketball and football" says Chris Janis, wrestling coach for Little Wound School.
Students use athletics, and in this case, wrestling to motivate themselves to keep their grades up and stay fit. Obesity and diabetes is a pandemic on many Indian reservations in the United States. Native Americans are 2.2 times higher— Likelihood of American Indians and Alaska Natives to have diabetes compared with non-Hispanic whites. There was a 68% increase of diabetes from 1994 to 2004 among Native Americans (diabetes.org). Pine Ridge Indian Reservation is no exception. Often the rates are higher on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation than other places. An hour of exercise a day can also replace all psychiatric medications says some doctors. This is an important fact because Indian reservations face suicide rates of 3x higher than other comparable locations.
Exercise is a must and wherever a student finds happiness and the motivation to perform that exercise should be rewarded with what they deserve. In this case they deserve a new wrestling mat and the ability to care and store it.
Will you help us?
What We Need
- South Dakota High School Activities Association sanctioned wrestling mat
- Storage rack
- Mat Straps
- Mat Cover
The Difference You Will Make
Little Wound School has students that want to wrestle in a safe environment and stay fit, but cannot. A new wrestling mat will give student athletes of Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and Little Wound School the opportunity to gain confidence, exercise, compete at home in high school wrestling matches and relieve stress in areas where violence and suicide rates are highest of anywhere in the United States. "The number of Native Americans taking their own lives is more than three times the national average, and up to 10 times higher on some reservations" (www.afsp.org).
By sharing this campaign or donating to this campaign you will help us spread the word in one small step towards a larger goal, creating healthy, well-rounded student-athletes at Little Wound School.
Risks & Challenges
One major challenge is our practice location. It is in the elementary auditorium. The area is in use daily for meetings or school activities. The mat has to be rolled up everyday which can wear on it and create cracks and folds. What we need is our own practice building/room, but that's not going to happen soon. Little Wound might get a new school before that happens. We will just have to make sure that a wrestling practice room is built into it, but for now we will work with the storage rack, proper storage and care.
It takes approximately 3-5 months for the mat to be manufactured once purchased, so our goal is that our first wrestling meet home at Little Wound School be in 2015. Please help us achieve this goal.
Other Ways You Can Help
If you can't help then we are asking that you share this campaign and help us spread the word in this fundraiser. Our students need your help. Here's what you can do to help us:
-
Like the campaign posts on Facebook
-
Share the links on Facebook from our page
-
Tweet about it on Twitter
-
Retweet our posts from our account
-
Post about it on Tumblr or your blog
-
Share screen shots of it on Pinterest and Instagram, and so on.
-
Like and share our Instagram posts
-
+1 and Share our posts on Google Plus
WE NEED YOUR HELP!
We have 30 days to accomplish our goal.
Please donate today.
-The Little Wound School Wrestling Team