Social Awareness, GIVE create ‘bless bags’ for Homeless Awareness Week
Students collect supplies for bless bags during STEP
GIVE and the Social Awareness club have partnered for National Homeless Awareness week to fundraise for items to be placed in bless bags for the homeless and other disadvantaged people.
“We wanted to bring awareness to that in our community and ask our school community to donate items like, non-perishable items, toiletries, money, used clothing, toys, and whatever they wanted [for bless bags],” staff development teacher Kerrin Torres-Meriwether said. Torres-Meriwether sponsors both Social Awareness and GIVE. “Every day in the mixing bowl…we will be collecting donations.” After this week, donations can be brought directly to Torres-Meriwether in room B221.
The Social Awareness club was founded by senior Serena Spickler because she “noticed there were a lot of issues that I wanted to talk about and other people wanted to talk about but there is some feeling of awkwardness when talking about issues that are controversial,” Spickler said. Spickler feels this was because “people were afraid that people would have a different opinion and it would lead to an argument.”
Spickler said the goal of the club is to “[create] a safe environment that staff and students could come together and talk about these issues in a sophisticated and mature manner.” Spickler also wants people to “come to an agreement that it is okay to not have the same beliefs as someone else but it is important to understand that we can still coexist in the same environment even if we have different opinions.”
“My goal is to have this program branch out throughout the county and maybe even the country,” Spickler said.
The GIVE club was founded by senior Juan Arango. The acronym GIVE stands for Get Involved Value Everyone. Arango said, “I founded GIVE mainly because of what I have been through in my past. I was homeless on various occasions and during that time I felt like I needed help. My parents never had money to help me with anything.”
“So the reason that I founded GIVE,” Arango added, “was so that we could help people in the school and everyone who is in need of clothes, money for haircuts, [and other things].”
Arango said that he is “pretty happy with how [the bless bags] are going so far. I think we are doing a good job.”
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