OLIVIA SEVERSON OF UNIVERSITY OF DALLAS, a freshman on the women’s soccer team, has been selected the SCAC Character Female Student-Athlete of the Week for the period beginning December 19, 2016.
Severson is a native of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, and has been involved with her hometown community. The goalkeeper has been volunteering with Rotary for 14 years. She assists every year with Rotary Lights, which is a light display in La Crosse that brings people from all over when donate food or money that is given to local food pantries.
In July, 2014, Severson traveled with her Mom and some people from their church to Nicaragua for a mission trip. For two weeks the group was in Managua, Nicaragua to feed the children and build relationships. This set the blueprint for a newly annual project that Severson and several other high students collaborated on in her home town.
This inspired an idea in giving back is known as iFeed. Five months of planning in 2015 led to the first annual iFeed event on November 7, 2015. The goal of iFeed is to create many small food drives around the La Crosse community that later donate to the iFeed the day of. Five high school Interact Clubs in the area collaborated and went to local rotary clubs and asked for donations. After support there, Severson’s group presented to the Rotary Foundation and received a matching grant, which helped pay for the dry meal ingredients.
On Nov. 7, 2015, Severson was joined by several volunteers and together packed 54,718 meals, 253 cases of food. This would be shipped to Nicaragua to aid the relief there. Additionally, the group collected 30,213 food items, nearly 13 tons, to be given back to the La Crosse food pantries. Mayor Tim Kabat and Congressman Ron Kind pronounced the date as iFeed day in La Crosse.
Last month on the second annual iFeed day, the groups packed over 64,000 meals to be sent to Nicaragua and collected over 35,000 food items.
To find out more about iFeed and the entire day, click this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZmyF2dd8Fk