08/20/2026
What an amazing night we had at Family Night in the Park tonight! We got to celebrate a great human here in STMA....Hollee Saville!
Last year, Discover STMA presented our Community Impact Award to Sandy Greninger, recognizing a woman whose lifetime of service, compassion, connection, and community building left an immeasurable mark on STMA.
This year, that award becomes part of Sandy's legacy.
From this year forward, it will be known as the Sandy Greninger Community Impact Award, honoring individuals who embody the qualities Sandy demonstrated throughout her life: a servant's heart, compassion for others, a commitment to building community, and an ability to recognize a need — and then do something about it.
There is something incredibly meaningful about choosing the first person whose name will follow Sandy's on this award.
And we can think of few people more deserving than Hollee Saville.
Hollee has spent more than two decades pouring herself into children, families, education, and this community.
She is a longtime licensed family child care provider, educator, volunteer, advocate, and Vice-Chair of the STMA School Board. But if you ask Hollee about the things she has done, she'll probably be uncomfortable telling you.
Because Hollee doesn't serve for recognition.
She serves because she genuinely believes we all have the ability — and responsibility — to make a difference.
When Hollee saw local children who needed backpacks and school supplies, she didn't simply make a donation.
She formed the effort that eventually became Project Pencils, creating a way for our community to come together and ensure children throughout Wright County could begin the school year with the supplies they needed. This year, that little project served over 900 kiddos. WOW!
When our students and schools need a voice, Hollee uses hers. She advocates locally and at the State Capitol for STMA students, educators, special education, early childhood programs, and adequate school funding.
But some of Hollee's greatest impact happens in much quieter ways.
She created the Positivity Project, planning the project, coordinating volunteers, and donating the supplies needed to transform 98 bathroom stalls across three STMA schools with colorful, positive, and encouraging messages for students.
For the past seven or eight years, she has helped coordinate community participation and meals for staff during parent-teacher conferences at both middle schools — and since 2020, at the high school as well.
During an especially difficult year for educators in 2020, Hollee looked for ways to remind STMA staff that someone saw them and appreciated them. She coordinated dessert bars, wrote an STMA version of 'Twas the Night Before Staff Appreciation Week, and anonymously baked cookies for approximately 920 STMA staff members.
Because sometimes community impact looks like a major initiative.
And sometimes it looks like 920 homemade cookies simply meant to tell people, "You matter."
Over the years, Hollee has volunteered in classrooms, read to elementary students, worked with young adults in STMA's Wings transition program, donated books, school supplies, art materials, clothing, kitchen supplies, and other needed items to our schools.
And then there are the chicks.
Each year, Hollee brings 20–24 baby chicks into five STMA schools, teaching children about chickens and giving them the chance to hold one — something she says is one of the highlights of her year, although we're pretty sure a lot of STMA kids would say the same.
Since 2021, Hollee has also led a monthly Family Storytime at the St. Michael Public Library, spending Saturdays reading, singing, playing games, creating art, and providing sensory activities for local children and families.
Her commitment to service reaches far beyond STMA as well.
Hollee leads service trips to Honduras twice each year, recently completing her seventh trip. There, she and her teams go wherever they are needed — teaching English to children, leading children's activities, assisting with men's and women's events, giving motivational talks, helping with medical brigades, working on physical projects, spending time with families, and serving the community in countless other ways.
Hollee even preaches in Spanish at least once during each trip.
And perhaps one of the most powerful parts of Hollee's story is that she isn't satisfied with simply serving others herself.
She is intentionally teaching the next generation to serve.
For 21 years as a licensed family child care provider, Hollee has incorporated community service into the lives of the children she teaches. Her children participate in projects such as Operation Christmas Child, The Sandwich Project, Homefront Hugs, making bracelets for children in Honduras, cleaning local parks, and creating birthday bags for the Hanover Area Food Shelf — something they've done for more than 11 years.
She even teaches a class to other educators called "Community Service for Children," built around a belief that guides so much of what she does:
Children should learn from a young age that they can — and should — make a difference.
And she practices that belief in ways both large and small.
Since 1995, Hollee has regularly grown out her hair, cut off 10–14 inches, and donated it — most recently to Children With Hair Loss.
She volunteers at church. She teaches Sunday school. She helps with Vacation Bible School. She bakes for teachers, neighbors, doctors, dentists, chiropractors, and people who simply might need a little encouragement.
She advocates.
She organizes.
She teaches.
She gives.
And most importantly, she brings other people along with her.
That may be one of the reasons this particular award feels so fitting.
Sandy Greninger understood that strong families create strong communities. She had an extraordinary ability to see needs others might overlook, connect the people and resources that could help, and then roll up her sleeves and get to work.
Hollee carries that same belief in community forward in her own unique way.
And when asked to tell us about everything she has done, Hollee ended not by talking about what she has given to STMA — but about what STMA has given to her.
She told us:
"This community has impacted me! We're very blessed to live here and thankful our boys have been able to grow up in our community and schools."
Maybe that is the heart of community service.
Not keeping track of what we've given.
But being grateful for what we've received — and continually looking for ways to give some of it back.
For her extraordinary commitment to children and education, her advocacy for our schools, her compassion for families, her ability to inspire others to serve, and the countless quiet acts of kindness that will never make a headline but have made STMA a better place:
Discover STMA is incredibly proud to present the 2026 Sandra Greninger Community Impact Award to Hollee Saville.
Hollee, thank you for showing our children that they can make a difference.
Thank you for showing the rest of us how to do the same.
And thank you for helping build the kind of community Sandy spent her life working to create.
We are so grateful for nights like tonight, and people that show up for this community, like Hollee Saville!
