The AVID freshman class hosted a holiday drive that took place from Nov. 29 to Dec. 14 to spread joy and help people within the community during the holiday season.
The items donated to the holiday drive consisted of toys, some items in particular included cars, stuffed animals, board games, books, action figures, scooters, and blocks. Additionally to all the toys that they were able to collect from donations, there were also many winter clothing items donated such as hats, gloves, mittens, jackets, and scarves.
In total, they collected a total of more than 50 toys and 25 jackets that they were able to donate. All the items that were donated were collected to be given out to kids all the way up to 18 years old.
The holiday drive was completely developed and led by freshmen enrolled in the AVID course as their final project for the semester.
“The freshmen have to do a service-learning project,” said AVID teacher Shannon Garcia. “The students got into groups during class and each group came up with an idea of a service project they wanted to do. Then, we shared out as a class and they voted for which project they wanted to do as a class for this semester. The winning group this year came up with the idea for a Christmas Drive that we made more general into a holiday drive.”
AVID is a 4 year long course students can start taking when they are a freshman and continue until they graduate. The purpose of the course is to help students develop different skills such as study skills, organizational skills, college research, and career development that help to prepare for college.
Along with college preparation, the class also does service style projects like the holiday drive, as well as their future plan for next semester to volunteer at an animal shelter.
After researching many different places that were available for them to donate the items that were collected throughout the drive they decided on donating them to R-Church which is located in Elgin.
They made the decision to donate the items from the drive to R-Church because one of the students in the course has family who volunteers there. In addition to that when they looked into the criteria of what the church accepted it was much less specific in comparison to a lot of the other places they were looking into donating to.
The results of the holiday drive were successful and they were able to give many boxes of donated items to R-Church.
“I think we were very successful. We had to take two cars full of boxes to the church and we also received a lot of new toys that teachers bought specifically to donate to the drive,” said Garcia.
In the end, the students were able to accomplish their overall goal and help out many people.
“The goal was to spread holiday cheer and share it with those who may need it the most during this winter and holiday season,” said Garcia.
