Clubs have changed a lot due to the online learning environment. Despite this, many new clubs have emerged. Three clubs in particular hope to set themselves apart from other clubs by helping the community and spreading awareness on important issues.
One of the new clubs is the Red Cross club, founded and led by senior Sharvani Kondamudi. Kondamudi’s club is a part of the Red Cross association, and it works to create online fundraisers, to educate others in disaster preparedness, and to send support to military members and family. Kondamudi said that she wanted to create this club in order to serve the community with friends to implement protocols that can save lives.
“As cheesy as it sounds, I’ve always had a passion for helping others,” Kondamudi said. “I hope to ease the discomfort of others emotionally and physically for people around the world and make a meaningful difference in people’s lives.”
Juniors Neeka Ghazanfarpour and Grace Liu have introduced the Feeding America chapter to Inglemoor this year. Feeding America focuses on fulfilling any food based need in the community. Both leaders have been working on organizing food drives and fundraisers. Recently, the club has been working with Tilth Alliance, a local non-profit organization, to bring food bags to the elderly.
“We’re both super passionate about making sure everyone has a meal and volunteering and wanted to combine our interests into a club at Inglemoor that would make a difference in the community,” Ghazanfarpour said.
Lastly, the Feminist Student Organization founded by Whitney Nakata focuses on starting the discussion around gender issues at Inglemoor. Nakata said that she wanted to start this club when she saw that there were no spaces to talk about gender at Inglemoor. While the club is called the Feminist Student Organization, Nakata intends to open this club to the LGBT community as well.
“We hope to spread awareness of issues people may not be aware of, as well as widen peoples’ perspectives,” Nakata said.
All of the club founders agreed that online learning has created various challenges for new clubs. Nakata in particular mentioned that a big challenge was managing the paperwork that is required to start a club.
“It was difficult to communicate with the ASB executive team and office with just emails,” Nakata said. “There was also some confusion in filling out forms because some were not updated to suit the current online situation.”
Virtual club meetings have been a big issue for all three of these new clubs. Nakata and Kondamudi in particular have resorted to activities like Kahoots and presentations in their meetings. Kondamudi also said that she had trouble implementing their usual projects like the blood drive because of the pandemic.
“If the club were in person, we would be doing a lot more direct volunteer work, such as creating care kits, going to other schools or to Inglemoor classes to give short presentations about preparedness, cleaning emergency vehicles, blood drives, distributing preparedness supplies, and much more,” Kondamudi said.
One of Ghazanfarpour’s greatest challenges with the online club environment was recruiting new members. She said that since there was no in-person club fair this year, new clubs had to get creative to convince new members to join the club.
“We couldn’t do things like spread the word out at school or hang fliers up in hallways,” Ghazanfapour said.“We had to solely rely on creating a strong social media presence through Instagram and building our own website.”
Despite these challenges, the leaders have advice for any students looking to ignite their passion and to start a club during this time. Nakata said that she recommends that founders start as quickly as possible in their club application.
“Make sure you get all the forms filled out ASAP so you can get the process started right away because it can take a while. Also, don’t worry about it being perfect; we are still figuring out what we are doing.”
Ghazanfarpour, on the other hand, suggested that any people starting a club should do substantial research to make sure there is interest in the club and to find something new they can bring to Inglemoor.
“I would say to stick with it, and the process is a little confusing especially because it’s online, but there are resources and people to help.”
