This past weekend, the parking lot at the East Side Grace Brethren Church (Chip Heim, pastor) in Columbus, Ohio, was covered with mulch. Bags and bags of mulch were stacked on wood pallets around the perimeter of the parking lot as part of the Living Proof Youth Group’s annual mulch sale.
For almost 20 years now, East Side’s youth group has sold mulch as a way to assist teens with funding for summer and winter retreats and camps. Each teen has an account, so whatever they raise goes directly into their account. If a teen has money left over, then that money is distributed to other youth in need of financial help to attend events. Each bag of mulch sold yields $1 to a teen.
Trucks start dropping off the stacks of mulch on Thursday, and by Monday morning the parking lot is back to normal. However, on Friday afternoon and all day Saturday, trucks, youth, youth workers, and parents are hard at work.
What started as an endeavor that could be accomplished using cars and a couple of pickup trucks has grown dramatically over the years. This year the group needed to rent two 24′ long trucks, plus a local company donated a fork-lift, and another family rented a 24′ long truck just to deliver their children’s mulch.
So how much mulch was sold by the Living Proof Youth Group? This year’s total was around 10,000 bags!
That translates to $10,000 that went directly to the teens. The two teens who needed the 24′ long truck, Cody and Cameron Johnson ,ended up selling 1,700 bags of mulch themselves!
If your church or youth group is interested in the details of using a mulch sale as a fund-raiser, contact Pastor John Harmony at East Side at 614-861-5810.