BEND, OREGON – Sparrow Club is named Grand Marshal for Saturday, Dec 5th Bend Christmas Parade. This year’s parade theme is “It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas”. On behalf of Sparrow Club, Jeff Leeland the founder and Executive Director will be riding in the parade with his son Michael – the very first Sparrow kid.

Sparrow Clubs USA, like so many charitable organizations, was born from the personal struggles of an ordinary family. Little did Jeff Leeland know that his personal family crisis would someday lead him to found a national organization where the community impact and value was all about kids helping kids. Since it’s inception in 1995 Sparrow Club has grown from a local organization, spreading into 26 states, hundreds of schools and touching tens of thousands of students. The Sparrow kids in medical need that are helped through the program are important, but the real work being done is with the healthy students, bringing out the love and compassion they feel through the selfless hours of volunteering they do to help their Sparrow. “Sparrow Club exists to set the stage for heroic acts of kindness in schools and youth culture for kids in medical need” says Jeff Leeland.

In Central Oregon more than 40 schools and over 15, 000 students are participating in the Sparrow Club program this school year. To date over 600 Sparrow kids have been helped through the Sparrow Clubs USA program with over $5 million dollars distributed to Sparrow kids and their families. “The reason we started Sparrow Club is the belief that kids will do heroic things when they have heroic things to do. It unleashes a sense of compassion and service that can last a life time” stated Jeff.

Along with Mr. Leeland, Shirley Gribskov Ray the 2009 Pioneer Queen will be riding in the parade. Shirley, 82, was crowned Pioneer Queen in February of this year. She has lived in Central Oregon since she was 7 months old.

The Parade will begin at 12 noon, Saturday December 5th downtown Bend. For more information about the parade, entries and the route please visit www.bendchristmasparade.org.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 12th, 2009 at 7:03 am and is filed under Community News, Press Releases, Top Stories. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.