Student Council to Help Charity Battle

With COVID still running rampant through the country and hundreds of thousands left homeless, giving back to the community is how student council plans on helping out.

Student council, after seeing another group do this event a previous year, decided that now was a great time to give back to the community. Hoping to spark some hope and charitable feelings in Washington county, the charity committee will be making a total of 50 tie blankets for donation.

Set to happen in January, student council charity committee member Kiley Williams-Chvosta mentioned the importance of doing these events.

“We thought that the best thing for us to do is to support our community,” Williams-Chvosta said. “Other places are supporting their communities and the best thing we can do right now is give back to our own.”

Nash Merklein, the co-chair of the charity committee, is excited for this event and the satisfaction that giving back to the community brings.

“I am extremely happy to be a part of this fundraiser. Knowing you are helping out people in need, with the projects you do, is a very rewarding experience, especially if you can partake in the project with your friends,” Merklein said.

Senior Alexis Wetzel, after being directly affected by the effects the pandemic is having on the economy, hopes that student council will help push the community towards charity.

“I think that charity is extremely important, especially with the current pandemic situation,” Wetzel said. “I can speak from experience that the prolonged effects of Covid have cost me my job. I hope that the community can just come together to make the holidays as normal as possible for everyone.”

Shelters are hurting for supplies, but donations have to be heavily regulated. Only new, untouched items are accepted at some locations. Some places only accept cleaning supplies, and others are only allowing monetary donations.

“With the risk factor, used blankets, clothing, used clothing, nothing like that's going to be donated. The only thing we can accept, if we did go the route of the new cleaning supplies would be new cleaning supplies and monetary donations. Almost all places are accepting that right now,” Williams-Chvosta said.

If student council ends up opening up to monetary donations, Williams-Chvosta hopes that people will be willing to donate.

“I think more than ever, during a time of crisis and a time of need, [the shelters] need more supplies. Monetary donations are mostly acceptable. Cleaning supplies, depending on your shelter, most of them will accept almost anything. New clothing or new blankets are sometimes needed to be donated to some charities,” Williams-Chvosta said.

Merklein emphasizes the need to just donate what you can, knowing that not everybody can donate a lot.

“Everyone can help by donating anything they can to their local nonprofit organizations to help the organizations do what they need to do to help others,” said Merklein. “It doesn't matter if it is only a single can of soup or a whole bunch of blankets, anything they do will help out no matter how big or how small.”

With the rising need for donations and help, raising money and getting donations are more important than ever.