Group turns wishes into dreams come true
The nonprofit Wishes & Dreams Foundation started in Isanti County is organizing a pageant/talent show and Stuff the Truck event Nov. 19 in the city of Isanti to raise funds for helping needy children this coming winter.
The event will be at Isanti’s Spectacular Events Banquet Hall and will begin at 10 a.m.
The foundation is accepting applicants in various age categories to be in the talent part of the show, which is open to males and females age 0-19. For more information call foundation director Jennifer Ryan at 763-244-6781 or 763-444-4000.
Ryan, who recently obtained the nonprofit status for the foundation, said she is seeking to get Princeton area people involved in the fund-raiser. Ryan said last week that she has scheduled Miss Minnesota Teen, Miss Minnesota and Mrs. Minnesota to be at the fund-raiser. She also talked about having the Cambridge-based In His Steps ballet group in the 3-4 hour show.
General admission to the show is $10.
People who raise at least $50 each for the fund-raiser will receive a door prize, according to Ryan.
Ryan says she had for several years been doing some of the volunteer work that the foundation does as a nonprofit. That was helping people with disabilities or soliciting donations to give to people in need. Since the foundation attained the nonprofit status, she said, more help has been given to families with hardships such as the situations of a parent being out of work or a single parent having financial difficulty.
“We just recently granted the wish of a six-year-old girl who volunteers with her family at a soup kitchen,” Ryan said. “She wanted to go to a father-daughter dance but couldn’t afford a dress. We were able to get a dress donated.”
The foundation also granted the wishes of five children in a homeless shelter by giving them school supplies for starting school off right and paid for two high school seniors to get their senior photos.
All of the persons working for the foundation are volunteers, Ryan notes. Besides granting wishes, the foundation organizes the work of a group of girls who the foundation calls Wish Ambassadors. “We are teaching these girls business skills, volunteering skills and mentoring skills,” said Ryan. “They are also in charge of helping to find the unspoken heroes and those in need who have a special wish and turning them (the wishes) into reality.”
Ryan also mentioned a girl in the elementary grade level who Ryan says has been a spokesperson for a homeless shelter for several years, being involved in the foundation.
Ryan said she is hoping she can get the word out about the foundation’s work since the trailer that the foundation ran in parades to create awareness about the foundation was stolen this year.
The working poor
Ryan, in an interview last week in Princeton, said her foundation is especially trying to help fulfill some dreams of the “working poor.” Those are persons who do not have a low enough income to receive certain government help, but yet don’t make enough to make ends meet, she explained. “We are keeping in touch,” Ryan said, “with school districts in regards to kids that might be going unnoticed who need help.”
Ryan’s motivation
Ryan says she was first inspired to help people in need when she witnessed the struggles of a developmentally-delayed boy in her elementary class. The boy needed help getting around the school building and she remembers thinking, “I will do it. I will help him. There was something about him, I wanted to help him.”
Ryan attended school in Princeton through the seventh grade and completed high school in Braham.
Ryan says relatives had asked her when she was a teen why she was spending the time she was helping people with disabilities when she could be spending more time out doing “what teens do.” The answer, Ryan says, was that young boy in her grade school who needed help.
The Wishes & Dreams Foundation relies on grants, fund-raising and donations to carry out its programs, according to Ryan.
The foundation also has a Wish Warehouse, in which volunteers stock clothes, household supplies, toys for the holidays and formal wear. The formal clothing is for students who can’t otherwise afford formal attire to attend prom.
Ryan, in a story written last month by Isanti County News editor Rachel Kytonen, said, “I think people forget that no matter how old a kid is, it still hurts when you don’t have something on that special day. People sometimes forget how poverty or financial hardship affects teens.”
