Snowflake Pageant Directors
Kyra and Andrea Walters have always had a passion for helping others. Andrea discovered her love of volunteering at a young age and passed that on to Kyra as a Camp Fire Boys and Girls Club Leader. The club enjoyed working together on projects like litter patrols at school, collecting pennies for Red Cross and filling shoe-boxes with toiletries and school supplies for homeless teens.
When Kyra and Andrea went to find organizations where they could regularly help out, however, they were frustrated to discover that very few places would take volunteers younger than age 16. In 2011, they found out that Oregon Food Bank would take younger volunteers and became "regulars" in the food repack rooms. They were both proud to know that they were making a real difference for people in need and in 2012, Kyra became the youngest certified spokesperson Oregon Food Bank had ever trained.
Kyra also began competing in pageants around the same time and especially enjoyed the ones designed to raise money for non-profit organizations. Andrea enjoyed helping Kyra with her fundraising and watching Kyra compete and fell in love with the idea of benefit pageants.
In December of 2013, Kyra participated in the first Snowflake Pageant benefiting Oregon Food Bank, organized and run by Amy Pluedeman. The pageant contestants collected over 3,000 food donation items weighing in at 1,904 pounds. A fun time was had by all and Snowflake Pageant was one of the top 10 fundraisers for OFB that month. Kyra won her age division and she and Andrea were excited about how successful the pageant was at helping the food bank. Amy was not able to run Snowflake Pageant again, however, and so graciously handed it over to Kyra and Andrea in 2016. During their first year of running Snowflake in March of 2017, contestants collected 2,675 pounds of food plus $1,265 for Oregon Food Bank.