Papillion-La Vista High student Jaclyn Janssen has had a lot on her plate over these past few months.
After hours of organization and fundraising, Janssen watched her hard work unfold recently when the premiere of her community service project ''Dance for a Wish'' hit the stage. The dance recital raised more than $1,800 for the Make-A-Wish Foundation and featured 17 performances from seven dance studios.
Janssen had been working on the project for almost a year.
"I came up with this idea last March and I would just randomly over the summer think of ideas and write them down. By the end of the summer I had a notebook just full of ideas," she said.
Janssen said she got the idea from her sister, Mindy, who had worked with Make-A-Wish children in the past at Disney World's Bibbidy Bobbidy Boutique. Once she got the idea, Jaclyn Janssen contacted Make-A-Wish representative Lauren Pillar for the go-ahead.
"I had a meeting with her, laid out all of my stuff and told her what I was doing. Right away she was like, 'This is nothing like I expected; we want to do this,'" Janssen said.
Janssen was tasked with contacting local dance studios and other business sponsors. Though she said gathering the participating businesses was not easy, her work eventually paid off — and she even learned some lessons along the way.
"I got turned down a lot, but I just kept going," she said. ". I asked over 50 dance studios and dance teams to help me with this, and I now have seven who said yes."
While it wouldn't have been possible without the dance studios and sponsors, Janssen said, the majority of the help didn't come from businesses.
"It's not really the sponsors I got; it's more like my family and friends who have helped me so much."
From $75 donated here and there, to friends helping with posters and T-shirt sales, Janssen said, the little things that friends and family have done to help her cause added up in the end.
The school's DECA sponsor, Mary Janssen (no relation to Jaclyn), supervised her progress and helped as the project unfolded.
"It's just a great feeling to see someone accomplish what they wanted to do," Mary Janssen said.
Jaclyn Janssen said she thinks her work paid off, and she hopes to do more projects like this in the future.
"I think it was really successful. We raised over $1,800 and we didn't really have any mistakes with the dancers," she said. "It went pretty smoothly."
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