The 2023 GoGrants are offered in support of the Immanuel Lutheran Church High School Mission Trip to the Mission, South Dakota Sioux Reservation.
Need for Funding
Immanuel’s high school students will travel to Mission, South Dakota in July 2023 to participate in a mission trip to assist families at the Sioux Reservation there. It is necessary for trip participants to raise funds needed for transportation costs over and above the registration fee charged by Group.
Mission Trip Description and History
More than 138 students and 30 adults from Immanuel have helped those in need through these annual mission trips since 2008.
Background
Since 1990, Group Mission Trips has organized domestic and international Jesus-centered mission trip experiences. Our short-term mission trips are designed for maximum impact for youth and adults. Each year, more than15,000 participants serve through their three unique mission trip experiences. As the non-profit mission ministry of Group Cares, they work hard to bring meaningful service to the com-munities they serve. Since their beginning, thousands of mission trip participants have racked up millions of volunteer hours serving people in need.
Event Description
Our students will spend a life-changing week with the Lakota people of the Rosebud Sioux Reservation, and you will truly never be the same! You’ll never forget the wild beauty of the land where the Sicangu Lakota, “Burnt-Thigh Nation,” live. The Rosebud Reservation is an exciting world of rolling grassy hills and deep, tree-lined creek bottoms—like the scenery you glimpsed in the movie Dances with Wolves. For centuries these prairies were ruled by the proud horse culture of the Sioux, who roamed and hunted buffalo from the Mississippi River to the Rocky Mountains. Today the various bands of the Sioux Nation live on reservations scattered across several states. The Rosebud is one of the poorest counties in the United States. Many here face a harsh choice: leave the reservation, the family, friends, and culture they love—or stay and live in shocking poverty, where up to 80% cannot find a job. Life is especially hard on the elderly, whose sons and daughters move away to find work, leaving them either alone or left to raise their grandchildren.
Budget
The full per person cost of the Mission Trip experience is $486. Our total Fundraising Goal to offset travel and registration costs for youth and chaperones is $15,000. Chaperones volunteer to assist during the trip (which often times requires taking vacation from work) and participate in preparatory events and fundraisers.