Sophomore Grace Leung is spending two weeks every month supporting our troops within advisories.
Leung along with junior Bryan Swanson decided to have a Support Our Troops Drive for the last week of November through the first week of December. Advisories were instructed by an announcement in the Daily Bulletin to bring in goods, such as chewing gum, shaving cream, and socks that will be sent to U.S. troops stationed overseas.
“I came up with the idea [the Support Our Troops Drive] because my cousin Joshua was just sent out in December to serve with the Marines. After sending him several packages I realized that a lot of soldiers do not receive anything because it was so expensive to send things. Their families [the soldiers] many times cannot afford the shipping and they run low on supplies a lot of times,” Leung said.
In order to drum up interest in donating, Leung decided to make the Drive into a contest similar to the annual can drive. Instead of tallying up points for each item, Leung decided to give all of the items on the list of suggested donations a certain point value. For example, a pack of gum equaled one point and a package of green T-shirts equaled 10 points.
“I came up with this idea because I thought of how expensive bigger shirts would be compared to a package of gum. The point system identifies the different expenses of the supplies brought in. The higher the expense, the higher the point,” Leung said.
Leung came up with the idea that at the end of the two week period, advisories would total up the amount of points that they have in donations and whichever advisory had the highest amount of points would win a pizza party for their advisory.
“The prize for the advisory with the most points was created to motivate and make the fundraising a little more competitive. It is more motivational and hopefully it gave people a little incentive,“ Leung said.
In addition to the donations collected from Nov. 28 through Dec. 12, Leung hopes to continue the donation drive the last two weeks of the month for the rest of the school year. “Hopefully the drive will continue for the rest of the year. I hope to be able to collect for the last two weeks of every month. There will be a winning advisory every month, so hopefully this will increase the amount brought in,“ Leung said.
Social studies teacher Jake Hollin and art teacher Bruno Baran had the winning advisories for the first collection period.
Sophomore Daniel Hentschel was a part of Hollin’s winning advisory. “We’re just champs, really. It’s our reputation. Mr. Hollin’s really competitive, and if we ever lose we’re just depressed,” he said.
“We didn’t win, we came in second. We were disappointed,” Baran said. “I’m very competitive, my advisory knows that. I bring in some things and I challenge them to beat me.”
“I could not decide the most important item to bring in because all of them are valuable. I know that a lot of shaving cream is used and it is very cold during the winter in Afghanistan, so socks are very much needed,” Leung said.
Maggie Cassidy is Print Chief for The Patriot and jcpatriot.com
Additional reporting by Brianna Glase