CHEYENNE — On September 20, starting from 5:30 p.m. and going for at least three hours, the Unaccompanied Students Initiative held their Building A Foundation Fundraiser event inside The Gardens section of Frontier Park in Cheyenne.
The goal of the Unaccompanied Students Initiative is to find homeless teenagers, provide them with a place to live, and help them to become productive members of society.
We’re a non-profit here in Cheyenne in Cheyenne and we also have a location up in Casper and we’re expanding in Laramie. What we do is work with local teenagers experiencing homelessness, we bring them into a home and then we work with them to get them out on their feet, finish school, essentially make them into independent living adults.
Austin Rodemaker; Executive Director, Unaccompanied Students Initiative; August 20, 2022
Activities during the fundraiser included a live band, live and silent auctions, raffles, and a gaming tent host by the Wyoming Gaming Library.
“Live music, games, food trucks, the whole nine yards here to raise money for USI. And all the money gets kicked back to the kids and that’s why we’re doing this,” said Rodemaker.
Lennox Auto Body was the presenting sponsor for this year’s fundraiser, contributing $25,000 to the charity. Halliday Motors was next biggest contributor with $10,000.
“Those are probably the two biggest one. We just appreciate their support and all the support we have in the community,” described Rodemaker.
The Wyoming Gaming Library, another non-profit located in Cheyenne, brought a tent with a collection of board games, video games, and Play Station virtual reality headset to the fundraiser.
“I know a couple of kids played their parents in Super Smash Bros. and lost, so it’s always a good time to watch the parent beat up on their kids in a little video game action.”
“We had food trucks here. Los Conejos and Sprosty’s Frostys were here and it was great to have them come out and support us as well,” said Rodemaker.
As pieces of the fundraiser, live and silent auctions were held. The live version had a very special and interesting item up for sale.
“The live auction went really well. We had a donation from C. J. Box, the famous Wyoming author, to have somebody get named in his book and that went for $1,000 so we’re pretty excited about that,” said Rodemaker.
Other auction donations came from local businesses and organizations including Cheyenne Motorsports. Rodemaker commented that the generosity of such organizations is how non-profits survive.
“A lot of the local boutiques and stuff were pretty key in the silent auction and giving us baskets and putting those together. Non-profits survive off the donations from the community and so we appreciate the communities and just how gracious everyone in Cheyenne and Casper are,” said Rodemaker.
Rodemaker estimated that over $75,000 had been raised so far during the night’s events, and explained that more were on the horizon.
“We’re putting one together right now. We’re not sure when it’s gonna be. We’re looking at either a music or comedy night. We’ll be doing this again next year and then we have our annual golf tournament as well that happens usually in the first week of June,” said Rodemaker.
If anyone wants to find out more about USI can search for their website and check out their social media pages.
James Meyer 