Clubs at Inglemoor such as Key Club and National Honor Society (NHS) dedicate themselves to community-based volunteering, while Feeding America and Feminist Student Organization (FSO) have more specific goals. Feeding America’s goal is to end hunger and FSO is committed to giving women locally and abroad the opportunities for advancement.
Key Club has a recurring volunteering event where members volunteer and help deliver groceries to Bothell’s Northshore Senior Center food bank every Saturday. In two hour shifts volunteers work specifically with the food bank, delivering food to a line of 20-50 cars and organizing the grocery donations. This collaboration has been ongoing since January because the staff at the Senior Center appreciate the help of Key Club, said sophomore Key Club member Paige MacDonald.
“[Our club advisor] started getting two people per Saturday morning for two hours at a time,” MacDonald said. “We work at the Northshore Senior Center food drive food bank and we help donate food and help hand out the food to the seniors and collect their groceries.”
MacDonald started the drive because many food banks often run low on donations after the winter holiday season, causing food pantries to have fewer resources to give to the community.
“During the winter, like Christmas time, they have a lot of donations because everyone’s in the giving mood and it’s Christmas time and people want to give back,” said MacDonald. “But after that, there’s the time period from February on, it starts getting fewer and fewer donations and fewer and fewer volunteers. And that’s when they really needed the help.”
MacDonald took to social media as an outlet to create community outreach and promote Key Club’s food drive. She uses the Kenmore Facebook group Buy Nothing as an outlet to spread the word about the Senior Center food bank and gather food donations by requesting community support for Key Club’s food drive. MacDonald received thousands of pounds of perishable and non-perishable food with the help of the community and her family.
“[The drive] kind of blew up really fast, and we started getting a lot of donations and that was awesome. So we put crates outside my house and suddenly we were just getting bags and bags of groceries delivered,” said MacDonald. People began dropping off Costco orders and one person brought a large truckload of food, MacDonald said.
MacDonald took the food donations to the Senior Center in four rounds because all of the donations couldn’t fit into her car. The overwhelming amount of donations was gratefully received, MacDonald said.
Collaboration
Collaboration has been an important part of organizing volunteering events around the community. Clubs with larger outreach such as NHS and Good Morning Inglemoor (GMI) often work to promote volunteer efforts of smaller clubs.
In March, FSO and NHS partnered in organizing a period product drive for the Ukrainian Community Center of Washington, where products are distributed to Ukrainian immigrants and refugees. The drive raised over 7,000 period products and it was a big success because of the help of NHS and promotion through social media, said senior FSO President Whitney Nakata.
“In total, like pads, tampons and liners combined, we had 7,714 and that was about $1,453 in value,” said Nakata. “It was a lot more successful than we had anticipated.”
Getting Involved
Although big volunteer efforts are often highlighted, anyone can make a difference in their community no matter the assumed impact of their work, said senior Feeding America Executive Lydia Oh. To find volunteering opportunities, you can visit the Key Club, NHS and Feeding America websites under the activity tabs on the Inglemoor website, or find all of the clubs on Instagram.
“A little goes a long way,” Oh said. “As long as you’re able to give at least 30 minutes of your time, I would say you still made a difference.”
