Published in the Oct. 15-28, 2014 issue of Morgan Hill Life
By P.A. Walsh Kommunity Kidz
Some people live in Morgan Hill aren’t as fortunate as other citizens because they don’t have daily life resources such as clothes, blankets, food and water. We at P.A. Walsh Elementary School represent a group of sixth-grade students who are trying to make a historical mark serving as leaders by helping our community help others.
Our teacher, Darren McDonald, one day in class asked us how we can we make an impact on history. One of our students, Andrea Martinez, came up with an idea to create an on-going canned food drive to help others. Mr. McDonald broke us into group and we started meeting and discussed how to go about the process of helping others by collecting canned foods. Mr. McDonald picked individuals from the groups that he thought would make good leaders and we started having meetings.
After a couple of meetings over two weeks, we came up with ideas that we wrote on our posters and presented to our principal Teresa Sermersheim.
We told her our business plan which included marketing the idea to the public, collecting food, clothes and water from members of the community, organizing the items that we collect into categories, and partnering with Ceceilia Ponzini, a local woman who created the Cecelia’s Closet program through her Edward “Boss” Ponzini Foundation. We chose to join forces with Ponzini because she works with nine other schools in the Morgan Hill Unified School District to provide food and clothes in a spirit of dignity.
Starting in early October, we are going to get the word out about this idea to help people that can impact many local lives.
Students at P.A. Walsh are being asked to bring at least one can or piece of gently-used clothing to a collection bin that can donate every week. Once a month, we will bring the items to Cecelia’s Closet to be given to needy families.
If anyone in the community would like to join us in our aspiration to help people, they can bring items to the school office at 353 West Main Ave. and drop it off.
As servant leaders, our group, which we call Kommunity Kidz, would like to thank people who give us donations. Together we can stop hunger in Morgan Hill.
Jacqueline Arellano, Andrea Martinez, Tiffany Chin Chi, Emily Kane, Virginia Regalado, Serenity Cheshire, William Zahrt, Suzie Quezada, Lizbeth Mendoza.
