By Kimberly Chen,
Staff Writer
Community service clubs are working like Santa’s elves this season by giving back to the community.
Los Angeles Children Hospital Club
As a part of their yearly activities, the Los Angeles Children Hospital Club hosts a donation drive for struggling families to keep their spirits up during the holidays. The club will donate crochet ornaments to the Door of Hope, a Christian Pasadena-based non profit focused on sheltering homeless families. The cabinet asked students to create these ornaments, which were then counted, collected and sent off to the donation site. Those who couldn’t crochet learned by watching videos in conjunction with attending extra meetings, while also having the option of making cards for convalescent hospitals.
Students outside of LACH are still welcome to donate even after the drive ends, since LACH stores them for next year. Door of Hope has since distributed their collection at their Christmas Festival on Dec. 10. LACH’s goal is to allow students to use their artistic and creative talents for this event, staying in line with their purpose of providing students with an encouraging environment where they learn about concerns in the health community and use their skills to contribute to the efforts against those concerns. They plan on organizing more donation drives and events that students can participate in the future.
“The donation drive was a perfect way to achieve our goal,” LACH President Carrie Tran said. “We were given the chance to help people who are not as fortunate financially and because of that, are often met with mental health struggles.”
Wings of TC
Wings of TC’s Thanksgiving drive’s goal was to collect and donate food to churches and temples. Students donated sealed, undamaged, non-perishable goods to partake in one of WOTC’s club’s three planned donation drives. They collected over 30 boxes of pickled radishes, around 750 cans of food and other non-perishable meals. Although the club didn’t know where to donate the pickled radishes at first, they soon figured out that the temples nearby serve pickled radishes to visitors. Wings of TC dropped off donations at locations such as St. Luke’s, Chùa Diệu Pháp and One Hope at FBTC on Dec 3 and 4.
“I had a blast hanging out with friends and reaching out to local churches and temples,” Public Relations Director Audrey Hoang said. “The drive went pretty well too.”
The Wings of TC Club focuses on helping the homeless population while providing CSL hour opportunities for students. They plan on creating more future events that students can participate in if they attend their weekly meetings on Friday.