Dozens of boxes, hundreds of toys, and thousands of pounds of food have all been collected, packed, wrapped, picked up and dropped off in time for the holiday season. To say the Woolwich Community Services’ Christmas program requires the work and dedication of an entire community to keep going, year after year, may be an understatement.
The Christmas Goodwill Program reached its final stages this week as volunteers wrapped Christmas presents, and prepared hampers filled with foodstuffs collected from Kiwanis-led food drive last month. As of December 13, the hampers will begin going out to their appointed families living in the Woolwich and Wellesley townships.
It’s a lesson in community service; and, for students at EDSS, a lesson in leadership too. Rather than leave the school’s participation in the Goodwill Program up to an after-school club to organize, as some schools may do, or to the teachers, the local high school incorporates its community involvement into a course on leadership.
“We have a Grade 11 and 12 leadership class here, and our responsibility is to organize events for the school,” explained teacher Sheri Stover. “At this time of the year it’s quite common to do some things that are in the giving nature at the school.
The class breaks students into groups of four, and tasks them with organizing various events at the school. Organization of this year’s fundraising for the Goodwill Program fell to four students: Leeanna Lamb, Devin Gerth, Brett Weber and Lucas Economides, who split the project in two.
“Deven and I, we did the Angel Tree portion of the fundraising,” explained Lamb. “We had it at my elementary school, and that’s where the idea came from. But basically we have a tree up in school and we have angels stuck to the tree that says a specific age, gender and what we’re looking for for them.
“It also included gift cards, whether it’s a $10 Timmy’s card, or grocery cards or mittens or gloves. There’s a wide variety of it.”
“We did the toonie drive,” explained Economides of his and Weber’s contribution to the project. “We raised around $400, just within the school from students and staff. All that money went towards giftcards for Woolwich Community Services, and that was just in three days.”
The leadership course typically tasks groups with a major event to plan, and a minor event of which the toy drive was considered the latter. Other projects taken on by the students involves running the Battle of the Barns, held every other year at EDSS, against Waterloo-Oxford, organizing assemblies, Halloween celebrations and more.
The course is an excellent format to encourage more youth into community engagement, notes Stover.
“I think to have leadership as a class, it allows me as a teacher to support them in running events and planning events, and to be able to teach them how to do it. To have that time to teach them how to effectively run events, promote events, engage students,” she said.
