Brad Lab Does Vegas

This semester I've been working with American Mothers, Inc. as part of Bradley PR. We worked with Project Next Generation, a campaign to get high school FCCLA students involved with helping collect books to donate to preschool children. Over the past couple months we've been working with the high school students as well as American Mothers to publicize the drive and make sure the local communities got involved.


This week, we were finishing up the book drive, delivering the books and talking to local media about the event. I researched reporters in the area who were interested in education and teens getting involved. I found a reporter with the Las Vegas Review-Journal and wrote him a quick email saying I liked his work and asking if he was interested in learning more about our project. Literally within minutes he emailed me back asking for more information!


On Tuesday afternoon (after stopping for important items like Gatorade, Cadbury Eggs and Pringles) we headed out to Vegas for the event. We listened to Sting, One Direction and even some Led Zeppelin. We stopped in St. George at Texas Roadhouse, and Jon loved practicing his "Southern" accent. He was really good....not.


We finally made it to where we were staying around 10 and just went to bed because we had to be up bright and early to put stickers on all of the donated books. We had aimed for 1,500 and ended up with over 3,500!

Ry was really disappointed that someone would give away Calvin and Hobbes books.

Junie B. Jones books were my FAVORITE when I was little. "It's me! Junie B. Jones. The B. Stands for Beatrice. Except I don't like Beatrice. I just like B and that's all. I am in the grade of afternoon kindergarten. It is very fun there. Only sometimes I have big problems. Cause that is life, people." I swear that all my humor came from those books. 

After a quick trampoline and ping pong break, we headed to Canyon Springs High School where they had the preschool that would be receiving the books. We unloaded all the preschool books and brought them into a classroom where there were twenty of the most adorable little kids. 

Unfortunately, and I'm not even lying, a guy dressed as Buzz Lightyear robbed a store and so all the media we had pitched were out covering that story. It was still great to see all the little kids who would be benefiting from these books. We even got to stop and read to the kids for a while.


Then we had to run to the hospital to drop off quilts for underprivileged children. So many babies leave Las Vegas hospitals with nothing, so another branch of Project Next Generation is the ABC Quilts project. ABC quilts donates blankets to babies in need.

Overall, it was a great trip. I learned a lot and it was so great to see a semester's worth of hard work pay off in the end!