ELIZABETHTOWN – Bladen Community College hosted their fourth-annual “Touch A Truck” which was a program that encouraged children from the community to know the vehicles that surround their everyday lives in Bladen County.

Coordination was the key to getting all the different vehicles out on a Saturday morning to the college grounds and to get them all there at the designated time of 9 a.m. and running until noon.

“I have a great team of people,” Sondra Guyton, Vice president for Institutional Advancement and Community Relations said. “They’ve been working on this for weeks. We do this every year and send out a “save the date” to those you see here. We try to find different kinds of vehicles each year with the idea of inspiring little ones and get them on our campus and let them see the different kinds of vehicles there are. We hope they can get excited through the years and hopefully someday come back to the college too. We hope that when we get them when they’re really small, then they’ll come back for summer camps. Then we hope to see them back when they are in middle school and high school and we just want to grow these children up in our community.”

One of the assistants for the event who was instrumental in organization according to Guyton was Jennifer Hickman who is the Administrative Specialist for Institutional Advancement.

“We’ve built a list through the years as to who to contact,” Hickman said. “We try to build upon it each year.”

One of the features this year was the vehicle scavenger hunt. Each child got a card with different pictures of vehicles on the back of the card with little boxes they could check after they had actually touched the vehicle. They also had a chance to tell which was, in their eyes, the most unique vehicle, their favorite vehicle and the loudest vehicle.

After they checked off all their boxes, they could turn the card in and get a free matchbox car, truck or vehicle of their choice.

An ingenious way to interact with the kids, give away something they could take home and give some input to the staff as to what the crowds really liked about the day.

There were school buses, law enforcement vehicles, ambulances, BCC van, a transfer truck, maintenance vehicles, helicopters, tractors and combine, fire trucks, motorcycles, garbage trucks, an all-terrain vehicle, the mobile Library truck, a mobile command unit for law enforcement and military vehicles, just to name a few.

Breed Inglee who has been flying for 16 years piloted the flight for life helicopter which is based out of Columbus County Hospital to the Touch A Truck Day. The crew was technically on call, but still managed to make some youngster’s day.

“This means everything to me,” Inglee said. “I do this because I like to help the community where I can by employing my skills to better off everyone around me. We actually let the kids ask questions, sit in the helicopter and let them wear some of the gear. We just want to kind of get them excited about aviation and also just all the different community assets we have available.”

Guyton says that the helicopters landing always steal the show, but the most thrilling thing she sees each year is the partnership with community.

“From the sheriff’s department to the EMS to the helicopters and the farmers, there is just a great sense of a community that works so hard to work together for the kids.”

NEXT NC SCHOLARSHIP

Also unveiled at the Touch A Truck event was information about Bladen College’s scholarship program to kids whose parents make under $80K a year. Their motto was “Know what you’re getting. Know where you’re going.”

It was also pointed out that this scholarship was money that students do NOT have to pay back.

The Next NC Scholarship is a new financial aid program that helps most North Carolinians from households making $80,000 or less pursue higher education by fully covering tuition and fees at any community college or more than half, if not all of the tuition and fees to attend any public university in the state.

Eligible students will receive at least $3,000 to cover all tuition and fees for NC community colleges. For more information, you can visit NextNCScholarship.org or contact the Bladen Community College Financial Aid office at 910-879-5567.