The following is a letter presented by the committee of the Wellington Project Prom – which will be putting on the after prom on April 23. 

Submitted to Sumner Newscow — Since 1987 the community of Wellington has been nothing but supportive of Project Prom. We’ve made some changes this year and as valued supporters, we’d like to take the opportunity to fill you in on those changes.  As you may have heard, we are changing the venue for this year and it’s generated some very reasonable questions that this letter will hopefully answer.

Each year we survey the students looking for opportunities to improve our event. Their input is invaluable in making sure that what we’re doing will keep them coming back and committing to a drug and alcohol free extension of their prom night celebrations. The most frequent answer is a change in scenery since they attend school, most of their extra-curricular and even the magical event of Prom at the school.  We heard them and have been trying for a few years to work out the logistics of such a request.

Ultimately, we’ve decided to experiment with the option of alternating the venue from WHS to an off-site location every other year.  This allows each junior and senior student to experience both formats from one year to the other.  We think our current event at WHS is still great and the students are always very grateful for the fun.  We do, however, believe that changing it up each year gives them more incentive to attend both years. Since attendance is the key to achieving our goal of keeping kids safe on prom night, we felt we needed to be responsive.

Below is some general information concerning this year’s changes:

• 2016 PP will be held at All Star Sports in Wichita from 1 to 4 a.m.
• Students will be bussed to and from the event. No one is allowed to drive themselves. All busses will be chaperoned with two or three adults.
• Students will enjoy the activities under the security of the facility as well as PP committee members and parent volunteers. All participants are required to stay for the duration and will return to WHS on the bus unless a parent picks them up.
• Students will return to WHS about 5 a.m. for prize distribution and a warm breakfast provided by parent volunteers.
• We have the same great prizes including many useful items for college such as mini-refrigerator, futon, laptops, TV’s, gift cards and much more.
• Most importantly: ALL students are required to submit signed parental permission slips to attend.

Project Prom’s year round fundraising helps fund our event but we also know that without the addition of our community’s generous donations and support, we would not be able to continuously improve this amazing event.

Please realize our goal is to put money right back into our own community as much as possible but some money is spent regionally in South Central Kansas; a fact that I think we can all understand and is true even when our event is held at the high school.  If you’d like to get involved or if you have further questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact us at the following: Website:  http://wgtnprojectprom.wix.com/projectprom or email us at:  wellingtonprojectprom@gmail.com

Sincerely, The Project Prom Committee.

Follow us on Twitter.