LINGLE – When we think about the youth of Goshen County, we think of their athletic achievements. We think of their scholastic advancements and extra circular participation. We don’t think about the legacy some of our county’s students leave behind in the hallways of their school. 

Down the hall of the Lingle-Ft. Laramie High School, the buzz of chattering students echoed as they passed by one another on a beautiful spring afternoon. Sitting on the benches right in front of the office were members of the student council, Louden Bremer, Nathan Fish, Brenly Shipp, Kenzie Wilkins and Addison Scott. The small group of seniors shared a laugh when Bremer shouted, he needed another cow in Spanish as they waited for the council’s advisor, Erin Estes. 

The fabulous five sat patiently waiting. They appeared to look and sound like normal high school seniors. But to many students in the Lingle-Ft. Laramie halls, the small council leaves a legacy behind with their kindness and willingness to recognize student hunger and a need for change. 

“The beginning of my sophomore year, the school board had a meeting here in Lingle and I went to it with my mom and dad,” Bremer explained. “Chrissy Hergert, she’s the elementary school secretary, she brought the light to the fact that since school lunches were no longer free and reduced, that kids couldn’t pay for their lunches. She and other staff members were paying out of their own pockets for kids to be able to eat.”

“My dad kind of nudged me and he was like, ‘We have these fundraisers all the time for football and basketball and stuff like that and those are great. But as a student council with your position, why don’t you do a fundraiser for kids to be able to eat lunch?’ I was like, ‘Yeah, that would be really powerful. That would help out a lot,’” Bremer recalled. 

Bremer brought the idea back to the student council and the Lingle-Ft. Laramie Hunger Initiative Project was born. 

“Everybody got on board. We were like, ‘Yeah, let’s try to raise like 500 bucks for this fundraiser,” Bremer said. “Then we started telling our story, started fundraising.” 

According to Bremer, Denise Jackson, the school librarian, has been a key piece to the initiative’s success. 

“She knew that the first lady, [Jennie Gordon] has a statewide hunger initiative and she kind of shares the same goals as us,” Bremer explained. “So, Ms. Jackson actually got us in contact with her. We went down there and just kind of went down there hoping to have a discussion to kind of see what she did, see if we could take anything from her. The she was like, ‘You know what? We would love to match up to $5,000 in a grant to you guys.” 

“We’re like, all right, challenge accepted,” Bremer said with a grin. “Let’s start raising some money.” 

The council went on to raise their own $5,000 which was matched by Wyoming’s First Lady, Jennie Gordon’s hunger initiative. 

“After the first year, we’d raised over $12,000 and erased all the lunch debt we had over that year and then continued to do this fundraiser. The next year, we wiped it out too,” Bremer said. “That’s kind of the beginning of the story for me.”

According to Fish, the council holds several fundraisers to help support the hunger initiative. 

“We did a Chuck-A-Puck, that was one,” Fish said. “Chuck-A-Puck, it’s like you basically sell hockey pucks for certain price and then you have your cash prizes. At halftime basketball games, people are in the stands trying to make their pucks into a trash can. Then the winner gets the cash prize and all the other funds go towards the hunger initiative. It’s a pretty cheap fundraiser for us to do because we already have the pucks and stuff,” Fish explained. “It’s really engaging and fun.”

“I feel like our community is really good about helping out. Our stands, every basketball game are always filled so it’s nice to have a lot of people,” Scott added. “So, it’s nice to have a lot of people.”

“People are willing to donate to a cause that’s going to help all, maybe not all kids, but a group of kids that maybe wouldn’t get help otherwise,” Bremer said. “I think by sharing, doing exactly what we’re doing right now, by sharing our story, people are like, ‘I agree with that. I want to get behind that.”

Bremer explained the council was able to raise funds simply by telling those in the community the council’s initiative’s story. The council announced their initiative’s story had spread and other student councils began to run with the idea of raising funds to help pay off student lunch debit and help the community. 

“Other councils are starting to take the idea and implement it into their own schools as well,” Wilkins said.

For Shipp, the best part of the council’s initiative has been watching the small goal be reached and the council still being able to help in other locations of their school and community. 

“The coolest part for me is it started with just getting rid of all the school lunch debt in our school but we have also been able to use the hunger initiative fund to, how much money did we donate to the after-school program? Shipp asked Estes. 

“This year we donated $4,000,” Estes responded. “The first year we donated $2,000.”

“So, we have donated $6,000 to our after-school program that’s right over here,” Shipp continued. 

The after-school program is essential for the students of Lingle-Ft. Laramie the council noted.

“My sophomore year, when we first started doing the hunger initiative, I worked at the after-school program. Basically, what it is until 5:30 p.m. kids [have a place to stay] – so parents who work and can’t pick up their kids and don’t have a mode of transportation for the kids after school and sometimes, because kids can’t be home by themselves – They can go to the lunchroom after school,” Scott explained. “They’ve done it since we were little kids. There are people who are called tutors and we have supervisors. Students really get involved with it. They deed the kids and read with them and play outside on the playground. We do little labs like learning projects that we have. We have curriculum that we follow.”

Scott noted the children who participate in the after-school program are fed a snack or two until their parents can pick them up.

“It’s honestly a very cool environment, very personable,” Scott added. “Especially, Lingle is a bit smaller, so you really get to know the kids. That’s why I felt so blessed to be able to be a part of both the Hunger Initiative Project and to be on the side that was receiving benefits from it.”

Scott and the council agreed many students, staff and parents in the school were thankful for the project because funding isn’t the easier to obtain for after-school programs.

“We were also able to use some of the funds to go to Walmart in Riverton when we were at our WASC (Wyoming Association of Student Council) convention this year,” Shipp said. “They did a community service project where we sent hurricane relief stuff on a truck directly to the hurricane efforts. That was really cool because we got to go specifically pick out what food we could be able to send to these people that are in need.”

“It’s not even just helping our school, but [it] has literally almost spread to a nationwide type of thing in a sense,” Shipp concluded. 

Bremer noted the council saw a need in their community and they filled the need, leaving opportunity to help in other places. 

“This fundraiser, the whole thing from the very beginning is about seeing a need and filling a need. That’s really the basis of how this project started and how it kept going. When Brenly [Shipp] talked about [how] we were able to help people across the county, we saw a need here in our own school, in our own community and we got that filled. We paid off the debts until there were no more debits and lunches were free and reduced again,” Bremer said. “Right now, and for years to come, I hope we’re going to continue fundraising and filling the need if it ever should arise here again in our school.” 

Bremer stressed the council was pleased to have been able to provide even such a small contribution to the hurricane relief efforts.

“Another thing that we’ve sent money to is the backpack program,” Bremer said. “Mr. Cotant, he started a backpack program years ago, which sends good home with kids on the weekends. So, we donated to that so that they would have funding to go ahead and purchase more food and keep kids fed over the weekend,” the council president noted. “Obviously, it’s one challenge to get kids fed here when they’re at school, but if they’re going home for two days and not having food, that’s a whole other thing.”

“It was, like Addy [Scott] said, it’s a real blessing to have a community that cares so much about the other people that live in it. And that’s just – I wouldn’t expect anything else from where we live,” Bremer said. 

According to Bremer, fundraising is an undertaking for people on the side of giving funds and Bremer and the remainder of the council know when funds from the community are donated, they are hard-earned dollars. 

“Everybody donated very willingly because of the cause that it was going to. People did donate in large amounts, but because so many people donated to it, whether a large or small amount, the money that we made was astronomical,” Bremer said. 

In part in leaving behind a legacy at Lingle-Ft. Laramie Schools, the council enjoys being able to spend time with the elementary student’s during the track and field day, mentoring the generations of student council members to come.

“We do the elementary track and field day at the end of the year. All student council pretty much runs it. We have kids that get to run or do events and jumping events and stuff,” Fish said. “It’s just a really fun day. When I was little, I loved track and field day so, I kind of got to be passionate when Estes let me take over some stuff. But we do a lunch at the end and it’s a completely free lunch to everybody,” Fish explained. “But not only is it free to the kids, but it’s free to their parents who come watch. Some of them have been donating money and then they get to come and partake in what they’ve been spending money on. Not only do they get to but their kids are still benefiting from it. It all comes full circle that day, it seems like.”

“It’s like repaying a lot of the community for all their generosity towards the things that we work towards all year long,” Scott added.

In the years to come, Bremer and the senior council member want the school’s under classmen to continue with the Hunger Initiative Project.

“Our council’s big goal this year was leaving a legacy. This group of seniors is really special,” Bremer said. “We’ve done a lot of, I would say, trailblazing as far as not that it hasn’t been there in the past, but it’s learning new ways and new styles to be leaders and bringing new ideas to the council. We talked about legacy and how to keep things in place and one of the best ways that we’ve kind of found is just by telling the story, making sure that the next group to come has a good, firm foundation of knowing what our goal was so that they can continue that,” Bremer said. “We would love to see this fundraiser continue for as many years as it’s needed.”

Since the project began, the council has raised over $25,000.

 Estes contributes the monumental success to the student council members of the current class of seniors as well as the classes of 2023 and 2024 who served on the council, playing a major part in the journey. 

For more information on how to make a donation, please contact Estes at eestes@goshen1.org.