Volunteerism around North

Helping through The holidays written by: Mary Martinez photo by: Ashton Overby During the holiday season, Key Club hosts an ‘adopt a family’, and groups who sign up provide gifts for families who cant provide for themselves. “It is really awesome helping the community out,” senior Jasmine MalIsos said.

ith the holiday season rapidly approaching, the need to help around the community rises. Many people are not able to have a happy holiday season because they don’t have the money or resources that others have. Clubs at North are planning to help out and make the community better this season by volunteering. “It’s neat to be able to plan out the events for HOSA. We plan ahead for the activities we will do in the months ahead. Individual people will be in charge of the event or activity,” senior Kaylin Robinson said. Students in these clubs are always trying to help with events and activities hosted at school, especially for the Holidays. There is lots of planning that goes into each event, but the places that HOSA voulenteers at go toward many people that can use the money to help their holiday season be less of a hassle. “HOSA is Health Occupations Students of America and I think that it is just not helping the people in hospitals, it’s also about helping out people within the community. Such as Harvesters, Ronald McDonald or cleaning up the streets to make Liberty a nice place to live,” science teacher Barabra Williams said. Getting to help at Harvesters and Ronald McDonald House has an impact on the Holidays for those in the community. Hosa works to help others not just those attending North. Every year HOSA does a carnival during April to help raise money for the local hospitals. “For HOSA, we had done a carnival picnic, which had raised awareness for disabilities. We raised the money and put it towards Hospitals to get little toys for children’s Christmas,” senior Jasmine Malisos said. Key Club helps out the community during the Holidays by getting families excited for Christmas. Key Club works on getting food for little kids for the holidays and adopt-a-family to make their Christmas merry and bright. “Adopt-a-family goes towards helping families during Christmas. We as a club are in charge of either the city of Liberty or Kansas City. We sit with the city and talk about families that need help for the holidays,” Key Club junior president Kimberlie Mason said. Key Club is known for helping out the community. The key club will clean up the town of Liberty and help donate to families and hospitals. “I’ve done some community service for Key Club like adopt a highway. We meet by Lewis and Clark and clean up around there. I’ve put together at a church’s ‘snack packs’ and that’s when we put lunches together for kids that don’t have any food. The last thing is students helping out during parent-teacher conferences which are PT clean up, which we get a cart of goodies for teachers to have while they are having conferences with parents,” freshman Isabel Tysdal said. Key Club and HOSA are doing community service to help out the cities of Liberty and Kansas City, HOSA has an annual blood drive. Students 16 years and older and staff members can go give blood during one day of school. “I volunteered to help Mrs.Williams with the blood drive. Us students that helped had to be there by 5:45 am, so we can help unpack and get set up. We worked for over 10 hours that day, while I was helping others I had thought to help the community by giving blood since I am healthy,” senior Yahya Ahmed said. “This year we wanted to help out the community more than any other year. This shows to the community that we help out and we actually care for people and their mental/physical health,” senior Kaylin robinson said. w

“the media wants something that is going to be eye-catching and when people view the media and see that those things are right around them it makes them feel bad about themselves because they have to acknowledge their privilege...

...So, they would rather hear about things globally because it helps them to think that it is not an American thing but we do have a lot of issues in America.” Megan Hammond