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Copyright Stillwater Area High School MMX
ISSUE 8 VOL. 57
May 18, 2012
A week to serve the community
Dani Theis,
Team Lead
National Honor Society (NHS) is an organization with entrance based on service and academics. This organization has a couple of very well known projects and each year, the organization tries to carry out a new project. This year’s new project is a weeklong service project. During the week of Coffeehouse, May 18, NHS did a service project each day directing a specific area. The officers worked hard to construct the week in order to aid the community around us.
NHS aimed high with this week, hoping to show their classmates and community members what service truly means.
Senior Officer Vince Radecke said, "The purpose of the week is to give back to our school, community, and state. We are planning it to unite each other within NHS, and to serve as our capstone project this year."
The idea for this week was tossed around at an officer meeting and came about from a different idea. The initial idea was a week of projects that would raise money to buy a memorial item for the school. However, the members and officers worked together to come up with a better fit for the week.
"We wanted to have a week like BLAST week but we ended up toning it down a little," said Radecke. "Maybe next generations will pursue doing something bigger."
Each day served a different part of the community. The week aimed to target the areas of: school, community, city, state and then the Coffeehouse cause.
"The idea of a service week came from the act that there are many levels of outreach that we can sponsor. With the format of the week, we will be reaching out to these different levels including our school, the Stillwater community, the local schools (in the district), and a local family," said Gaby Ruiz-Colon senior President of NHS. "The reason why we are doing this is to create awareness for these different levels because oftentimes we think of a lot of international issues, which are obviously still of great concern and importance, but we sometimes forget about the need that we have locally."
The community project was reading to elementary school kids. This project is usually done during the read across America; however, the timing just did not work this year. So NHS decided to make read across America a part of their week of service. The city project/state project took up two days. The first day consisted of buying material to make fleece blankets and the second was the actual making of the blankets. The blankets were taken to a hospital in order to be given to the patients.
The NHS officers planned this event for weeks before and worked with a lot of people in order to make sure the week was a success.
Ruiz-Colon added, "The time of organization hasn't been too large, it will be the execution that will truly make the difference!"