By: C/1st Lieutenant Jacob R. Schwier Cougar Battalion PAO for the White Street Journal
On Tuesday April 20, the Wake Forest High Cougar Battalion Headquarters Company completed a project they had been working on for the past two months.
Every year, it is part of the JROTC Curriculum to complete a community service project, but instead of thinking only about what you can do for your community, it also has to be a learning opportunity. The project, Service Learning, allows the practicing of leadership skills learned each year as a JROTC Cadet, and ferment new ones.
Every service learning project has to have a learning goal, such as problems in the environment, survival in the wilderness and common disabilities and how to deal with them. In this year’s virtual environment what could be achieved was lessened, but the goal itself still rung true. To help the community and a desire to learn.
This year’s project was to teach students in the third, fourth and fifth grade at the Boys and Girls Club of Wake Forest safe ways to ride bikes and wear helmets. Free helmets were provided to the children due to an initiative started by the N.C. Department of Transportation called the Bicycle Helmet Initiative.
The requirements to receive the helmets was to complete a lesson about why helmets are important and about how to stay safe while riding their bikes.
Due to COVID-19 restrictions only 5 lucky cadets were able to present the project at the Boys and Girls Club. Those 5 cadets were Battalion Commander Benjamin Parham, Cadet Catarina Healy, Cadet Edward Hines, Cadet Lia Stokes and Cadet Sean McClaren.
The project was completed with the help of the NCDOT and the Boys and Girls Club.
