Seniors Take on Projects to Serve Community

In Manteca Unified, senior projects are no longer a graduation requirement; but that hasn’t stopped several Manteca High students from doing them anyway. In the spirit of Valentine’s Day, a flashback to a few benevolent individuals who volunteered to help in their community by creating service oriented projects.

Destiney Herrera organized the Manteca High Santa Workshop- 479 students from MHS feeder schools wrote letters to Santa and 90 MHS students thoughtfully answered them. Destiney contacted the first grade teachers from feeder schools, provided a template for the Santa letters, organized the letters received by school, and selected high school student leaders to help coordinate the thoughtful response letters to first graders. Destiney

ensured every response letter was reviewed and edited, with one of the restrictions being that no child was promised anything.

Candy canes or stickers were added to each class envelope and were personally delivered to each school. Finally, Destiney created a checklist and implementation plan for the Santa Workshop to allow future seniors to replicate the experience.

Sanliya Stanly, Anchaleena James, Nikki Gomez, and Yan Ki Ma created the Blankets for Christmas project. These four seniors put their efforts together and made 32 blankets for St. Jude Care Center in Manteca. Having no experience in blanket making, the students gathered after school to teach themselves how to construct a blanket. For materials, they sent letters introducing and requesting donations for their project and several MHS staff members contributed, including Mr and Mrs Knauss.

The four students began their project in the Spring of their junior year and delivered the blankets to St. Jude’s on December 18, 2019. The staff and residents thanked the girls with warm responses and feelings of gratitude.