DECA Trivia Night to Aid The Hope Center

In the first ever “Trivia Night” at East, teams and clubs can represent themselves in groups of fiveand compete against each other by answering trivia questions to become East’s trivia champions. All money earned will be donated to The Hope Center, a Christian-based charity striving to make the urban neighborhoods of downtown Kansas City safe for kids and families. It provides a medical center, a housing corporation and also offers programs to help kids build character and leadership skills.

“Those skills have helped kids push through school and go on to colleges or trade schools,” said Hope Center operations director Matt Nagel. “It’s helped kids get through some tough situations at home.”

The charity event is lead by seniors Julie Aliber, Caroline Doerr, and Jennifer Gray as part of their long-term DECA project. They have been planning “Trivia Night” since early first semester.

The profits from the charity event will specifically be going to The Hope Academy, the Hope Center’s school that will open in August.

“One thing that they’re really in need of right now is whiteboards, so we’re hoping that the money that we raise will go towards getting whiteboards for those classes,” Aliber said.

“Trivia Night” will take place on Jan. 25 in the East cafeteria at 7 p.m. Letters were sent out to all faculty members explaining the charity event and information on how to form a team. Aliber hopes that athletic teams will attend to compete against each other.

“The other fun thing about it is that we sent it to coaches too so it can be like a competition against football and soccer, cheerleading and drill team, so that will make people interested,” Aliber said.

“Trivia Night” will be hosted by Nate Heron, who hosts trivia games in Westport three nights a week. He has hosted trivia nights at East before for faculty members.

“We hope he’s going to be able to keep it organized and keep it fun, because he doesn’t really do a lot of the academic ‘What’s the capital of this state?’” Gray said. “It’s more like ‘Finish the lyrics to this song.’ It’s like pop culture and music and it’s pretty much whatever we want it to be, and so we told him to keep it fun and entertaining for people our age rather than adults. We’re hoping it’s going to be fun and people will come and get into it.”

Teams will be placed at tables in the cafeteria and then answer trivia questions shown on a projector. Then they can either buzz in their answers or write them down on paper. The teams with the most points will win prizes.

“We’re trying to find sponsors and companies that will be willing to donate prizes,”  Doerr said. “We’re hoping to get gift cards to popular places around the area such as TCBY or Peachwave or Chipotle.”

Also at the charity event will be a spokesperson from Hope Center to talk about how to get involved with volunteer opportunities. Gray wishes the spokesperson will be the founder of The Hope Center and a Shawnee Mission East alumni, Chris Jehle.

“We’re hoping that he’ll be the person to come and speak to everyone and kind of give that viewpoint, coming from East and knowing what we’re going through right now, so it’ll give it more of a personal connection for him to be able to tell stories from when he was here and how he started it after he left,” Gray said.

Along with raising money, another goal of “Trivia Night” is raising awareness for the charity, which was established in 1998.

“As well as raising money for the Hope Center, we’re also trying to spread the name of the Hope Center and get more people involved,” Aliber said. “A lot of people around East are just involved in the SHARE organizations like ‘Operation Breakthrough’ and so people do a lot of volunteering for there. Instead we want people to understand that there are other options too.”