Throughout the district, Westerville students and staff have raised thousands of dollars to support more than 600 children in need during the holidays through Westerville Caring and Sharing.
Student organizations at Westerville Central and Westerville South high schools led school-wide fundraisers that raised more than $13,000 each, providing gifts for hundreds of kids.
Meanwhile, Westerville North High School called on teachers at each advisory period to work with their students on fulfilling children’s wish lists provided by Westerville Caring and Sharing. WNHS students donated gifts for more than 90 children in need with some advisory periods taking on additional wish lists.
“We wanted to take a new approach this year,” said Lauren Mattioda, a school secretary and Key Club advisor. “Instead of one large grand total, we focused on every advisory helping at least one child… At the end of the day, we wanted to make Christmas for as many kids as we could.”
At WCHS, Key Club members led the charge, collecting donations during the school’s flytime period. Key Club volunteers tallied the donations and each flytime period received an “adopted” wish list from Westerville Caring and Sharing. Donations were equally redistributed to each wish list and volunteer shoppers from each flytime purchased items from the wish list. All of the gifts were returned to WCHS on Friday, Dec. 10 and the school hosted a Caring & Sharing celebration where they showed a video that included performances from the choir, band, and ASL classes, as well as a thank you from Caring and Sharing. The video also featured pictures from the various competitions the school held throughout their Caring and Sharing project, such as the door decorating contest and holiday spirit wear day.
Following the video, the school live-streamed the gym where all could see the purchased gifts and hear the orchestra perform live. The school collected $14,045 in donations, providing gifts for 100 children, said Central's Key Club advisor Jenny Horn.
As part of WSHS’ Caring and Sharing project, the school’s Student Council planned days for Spirit Week as advisory periods collected donations from students. Students raised $13,985 for the project with more than $6,400 from two social studies classes: Eric Calland ($3,480.35) and Trevor Kielmeyer ($3,001). Many Student Council members volunteered to purchase gifts on the wishlists of 100 kids. To celebrate the project and show all the gifts that were purchased, Student Council advisors Megan Messner and Lauren Sefton planned to have a live broadcast from the media center and showcase recorded performances from Jazz Band, Soundsation, and ASL 2 on Dec. 10. However, the school went on remote instruction for the day, so they have been playing the performances during live morning announcements this week.
Students at other schools have also embraced the fundraising project including Annehurst, Hawthorne, Robert Frost and Hanby elementaries. At Emerson Elementary, students and staff raised $2,300, donating the funds directly to Caring and Sharing. First-grade students at McVay Elementary raised $4,000, purchasing gifts for 35 children and five senior citizens as well as gift cards for 11 teenagers. Whittier Elementary contributed $500 in gift cards as well as a number of boxes of personal care items.