The freshman AVID class comes up with a new community service project.
Artwork by Mia Nogueira
TJ is always looking for new ideas to help out the school and the community, and the freshman AVID class came up with a new community service project for the end of the school year called “Hope Tote.”
A tote is a small toiletry item such as toothpaste, toothbrushes, lotion, shampoo, conditioner, deodorant, razors, lotion, or any other toiletry item that would be helpful to someone in need. All toiletry items that the freshman AVID class collected were donated to the Denver Rescue Mission.
Mark Mallaney, the freshman AVID and Spanish teacher, had his AVID class get into groups and come up with a community service project and present it to the whole class. After all the presentations the class took a vote on which project to do, and Mallaney tallied up the votes, and the class chose Effie Andrianakos and Marissa Olan’s project “Hope Tote.” Then the class was all set to advertise the project. “Me and Marissa wanted to do a project for the homeless and then we found this project on the Internet,” said Andrianakos.
From there, the project was afloat. “All I did was count out the votes and send out one e-mail, the rest of the class did everything else,” said Mallaney. “They made the posters and hung them up, and they announced it on the announcements.”
The AVID class made their rounds and collected all totes during 6th period on May 14th. “Our class goal was to collect ten items, but all together we collected 78,” said Mallaney. “So I’m really proud of the class with all the effort they put into this project. I think the class was really proud of themselves too, of all the hard work they put into it.” The class collected enough totes to fill enough bags with each toiletry item collected.
“I was really proud of the class because we got a full basket full of totes and none of the class was really expecting to collect that much,” said Andrianakos.
Many classes helped support the AVID class and brought in a bunch of different totes. The fine arts department, the Computer Magnet and the whole AVID team contributed the most to the project. “The nurse, Betty Richmeier, and the social worker, Samanda Davis were a big help to the project as well,” said Mallaney.
“My hope for this project was to get the students to be involved early with helping the community and to hope they got a positive feeling with helping out their community,” said Mallaney. The AVID class was very happy with the outcome that their project brought to the community and is glad that TJ also helped “Spartan Up”.
