The Community Service Advisory Board In Training (CSAB-IT) class kicked off the year by holding our first drive a few weeks ago. The drive began on October 10 and extended till November 5. We partnered with the Ronald McDonald House New York, an organization that provides temporary housing for families with children who are in need of acute medical care and can not afford hotels.
The Ronald McDonald House gives these families a comfortable place to live, as well as a home and a community to lean on. While the organization provides the housing, it also relies on volunteers and donations for supplies and resources to stock the houses.
Ronald McDonald House New York requests a wide variety of supplies and resources. Our drive focused on toothbrushes, toothpaste, Clorox wipes, liquid hand soap, body wash, Ziploc bags, tissues and individually wrapped snacks. We placed bins in the Middle School on each floor, throughout the Upper School and in the library.
CSAB-IT student Sylvia Weinberg (Form IV) commented that she “enjoyed the process of learning how to help people and had never experienced community service like this before and gotten such a great response.”
Micaela Ramos (Form IV) shared, “Ms. T-O was also a really helpful resource and she helped us throughout the whole drive experience, and next time I hope that we can apply the skills that we’ve learned from this drive to our future drives.”
For future drives, we will work to be more organized in our planning, put up more posters and be more strategic about the placement of the bins, in order to expand the amount of donations and scale of the drive.
We extended the drive multiple times in hopes of receiving more donations. As the drive continued, we saw an increase in donations and as we carried out more outreach, the community responded and sent in more donations. In the end, we received over 400 donations.
To volunteer at the Ronald McDonald House, you have to be at least eighteen years old. However, there are many ways that high school students can contribute to the organization. High school students can raise money and run drives for the organization as well as helping with other aspects outside of each housing unit, such as meals.
We cannot stress enough how much each donation helps. Throughout our next drive, we will emphasize what each donation does for the recipients. By donating even a few items, you will give support to a family going through the unthinkable and make someone’s life a little bit easier.
