Bremer’s Outdoors Team in Minot Hosts Project Habitat

The Bremer Outdoors Team in Minot was busy last month hosting its first ever Project Habitat benefitting Companions for Children and Boy Scouts. The following article ran in the Minot Daily News. Also included below are additional photos from the event.

Spirit of giving
Project Habitat allows children to give back to community

By DAN FELDNER, Staff Writer, dfeldner@minotdailynews.com
POSTED: May 22, 2009

The steady pounding of hammers could be heard all around Maysa Arena Thursday evening as a throng of children and adult volunteers converged on the facility's parking lot for the first-ever Project Habitat.

The event was created by the Bremer Outdoors Team at Bremer Bank, and will benefit Companions for Children and the Boy Scouts.

Brent Mattson, president of Bremer Bank, said he wanted to get the Bremer Outdoors Team more involved in the community, and this was the prefect way to accomplish that while doing a lot of good for the children in Minot at the same time.

"I have great members, OK, but they want to give back. And I needed to find a big project for them to be able to give back," Mattson said. "And this is an opportunity for them to come out and help these kids build these birdhouses."

Children who showed up had the chance to build duck houses and birdhouses from prefabricated kits that were spread across numerous tables. Adult volunteers were on hand to drill small holes so the kids would have an easier time pounding the nails through the wood.

"What we did was we sent out about 4,700 invites to all the schools in town here, roughly fifth grade and under. You know, there's a lot of competition out there for these kids," Mattson said. "There's soccer tonight, there's baseball tonight, so we were hoping to get 100-plus kids, and we got that. It's our first year so you never know how it's gonna turn out."

Mattson said the more opportunities the Bremer Outdoors Team has to give back to the community, the better the members feel about being part of the group. Along with being a positive experience for the volunteers, he said this will hopefully be an equally positive experience for the children who take part.

"It boils down to there was an opportunity to get kids active in the outdoors, and helping us build these is something that will maybe trigger something, to make them enjoy the outdoors and become maybe future hunting or fishing people," Mattson said. "This is probably what the main thing is, I think, in my mind. We're introducing them to the outdoors, and my members just love to be able to help out."

All the duck houses and birdhouses assembled by the children will be auctioned off, with the proceeds being matched by Bremer Bank and then split between Companions for Children and the Boy Scouts. Mattson said Bremer Bank is also sweetening the pot by giving Companions for Children a $50,000 grant.

Companions for Children has been in the Minot community since 1972, and pairs adult mentors with children from single-parent homes who can benefit from another role model in their lives.
Billy Seright, program director for Companions for Children, said he was very thankful to Bremer Bank for inviting them to take part in Project Habitat.

"I think this is a great event. I'm really pleased that Bremer Outdoors was nice enough to invite us to partner with them and use it as one of our service learning events," Seright said.
While children living in single-parent families is a problem nationwide, it's a much more troubling trend in Minot, where the percentage of single-parent families is much higher than the national average.

"In Minot, at least according to the 2000 census, the latest census, there are nearly 2,000 children living in single-parent homes," Seright said. "There's a mapping system the census bureau puts out, and it divided Minot into eight tracts of land. And half of those eight tracts of land had a single-parent family rate of 45 percent. So four out of eight were 45 percent.

"And when you compare that to the national numbers, the largest grouping of tracts of land for single-parent houses was 23 percent. So it's an issue here in town that we as a community haven't really focused on, or it hasn't been brought to our attention too often. But it's a real issue."

Building birdhouses wasn't the only activity for the children to take part in, however. There were also stations for archery and target shooting, free hot dogs and pop were given out, and there were constant drawings that awarded prizes to children such as coolers, fishing poles, dodge balls and lawn chairs.

With all these activities happening all at once, it was obviously a huge undertaking to bring it all together. Sponsors of the event include Scheels, Muus Lumber, Dakota Boys and Girls Ranch, Cloverdale Foods, Minot Park District, North Dakota State Fair, Northwest Music and Sound, Acme Electric, Wal-Mart and Berthold Sportsmen Club. Other businesses and organizations that donated materials include North Country Sport and Marine, Souris Valley Bowmen, Pheasants for the Future, Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation and Pepsi.

Seright plans on making this an annual event, and said that while Companions for Children is getting a lot out of it, he believes the children swinging the hammers are probably getting even more. While they are enjoying a sunny day outdoors with fresh food and a lot of fun, they are also learning a valuable lesson about giving, a lesson that will allow them to touch the lives of others just as their own lives were touched Thursday.

"We made a change in the organization recently, switching from social and recreational activities to service learning activities, offering that to all the children in our organization, not just the ones that are matched with mentors," Seright said. "This is an example of it, because people volunteer from the community to give back to them, so this is a way to show them that it's good to give back to the community as well. That's the goal of that program."