emPOWER youth and POWER your school

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Even if you’re long past the school sports stage in life, you can still help emPOWER youth and power local schools!

Raising powerful and empowered children takes hard work, devotion, dedication, sacrifice and a village. Right now, POWERADE® is giving your village a chance to win a chunk of the one million dollars they are donating to local high school sports departments. Read on to find out how to enter.

DEVOTION, SERVICE AND SACRIFICE

Recently, my friend Juli over at Flirting with Flavor recently said that ‘parenting is devotion, service and sacrifice’ and man, that really struck a cord with me.

At the moment, I am in the midst of running my son’s PTA, working close to full time outside the house, running two home based businesses, teaching a toddler to dress himself and just generally not throw fits all day, driving my elementary son to karate three days a week, busing my high schooler to and from cheer practice and figuring out how to allow her to participate in all sorts of other school sports at the same time.

At the end of my day, the last thing I want to do is pack up a quick snack and throw my child in the car to chauffer them all over the county for sports. But you know what?? I still do it. Why? Because devotion, service and sacrifice.

School Sports and Families

We live in a rural community where town is a 30 minute drive in either direction and the high school is even further. Sports games, practices and meetings are a huge commitment not only for the students but also for parents. Living in this community I have seen first hand the benefits of involvement in school clubs, especially sports.

I have also seen how the kids who would benefit the most from the comradery, structure and good old fashioned competitive fun are often the ones whose families are unable to dedicate the time and money to enroll them in sports.

I have seen community members step up for these families. Taking students into their households on game nights so that parents won’t have to drive, passing down sports equipment and shoes to younger generations, feeding teams of students after school so that they will have a good meal before the big game and driving them home from practice after practice, no matter how far it is out of the way.

Parenting is hard work, devotion, service and sacrifice, but despite all the devotion in the world, we ALL still need a village.

The Benefits of Sports

According to the International Platform on Sports and Development youth experience many benefits when they participate in sports:

• improved attitude toward school
• more community engagement
• positive peer relationships

All of these benefits though, are highly dependent on the leadership. The ‘village’ of teachers, coaches, trainers, and community members are so important. Good leaders produce great results. These leaders are often teaching our children life lessons through sports as volunteers. And spending loads of their own money to do it.

It really does take a community and you can help! POWERADE® is giving away $2,000 grants to schools across the US to support High School Athletic Programs. Simply share your POWER THROUGH™ story for a chance to win $2,000 for your high school’s athletic department. See deadline and entry details below.

emPOWER youth

POWERADE® always powered me through my own school sports, and now all these years later it’s still what I turn to to power my own kids. With ION4® technology, an advanced electrolyte solution, POWERADE® replaces four electrolytes lost in sweat: sodium, potassium, calcium, and magnesium.

I throw a few bottles in the car for those crazy days when I forget to grab something from home before practice. I have a few in the fridge for the hubs to take to work on hot days.

When I stopped by Safeway and saw the amazing deal they are currently running on POWERADE® I picked up enough to power my daughter’s entire squad through a long day of cheer practice.

Power your school!

POWERADE® is giving away $2,000 grants to schools across the US to support High School Athletic Programs

Share your POWER THROUGH™ story for a chance to win $2,000 for your high school’s athletic department. POWERADE® is giving away $1 million to 500 high schools. Enter through 9/30/17 for your chance to win.

Submit your video or essay to register for your chance to win $2,000 to Power your School’s athletic program at http://cbi.as/a0fh8

The more entries from your community, the better! Share this opportunity and Power Your School Program!

This post was created in partnership with POWERADE®. Thank you for supporting the brands that support me! POWERADE® Facebook / Twitter / Instagram / YouTube