Bert Church High School’s Student Union Club – a student-focused extra-curricular group geared toward building connections within the school and community – raised 1,300 pounds of clothing and soft goods during its clothing drive this month in partnership with Value Village.
The initiative aimed to raise funds for school events, student-led initiatives, leadership trips, and community events, as well as providing clothing for low-income families and funds for Diabetes Canada – a partnership organization with the local thrift shop.
According to Ryan Jones, instructor and advisor to the Student Union Club, it was one of the students who came up with the idea of raising money through a clothing drive. Funds would enable the club to continue to run some of its programming throughout the year, such as Bert Church’s yearly back-to-school carnival.
“[As part of] our welcome-to-school carnival, we take a little section of the day and students set up games and we had something for everybody,” Jones said. “We brought in a petting zoo and welcomed everybody back to the school year and started building the school culture up.
“[The students] wanted to recoup some of the costs of that so we can do it again or do other things throughout the year.”
He added that students collected clothes from family, friends, and neighbours, or community members brought their donated goods to the school during the drop-off period, altogether raising 1,300 pounds of goods for the charitable organization.
“I got [donations] from my neighbourhood as well,” Jones said. “We organized and bagged all the clothes and we dropped [them] off and they pay us by the pound.
“We only took gently-used clothing items – we could have taken kitchen appliances and furniture, but it was too bulky.”
He added the club didn’t quite reach their goal of raising $1,000, but were able to recover some of the funds spent on events earlier this year.
Jones added the clothing drive was a great learning opportunity for the students.
“Even though we didn’t reach the goal, they had to learn how to communicate with the community, how to sort, organize, and get everything together, because most of the things we do with our student leadership is all student-driven,” he said.
According to Jones, the club might do something similar in the future but will refocus whatever initiative they choose to meet their needs. He added the program’s biggest fundraiser of the year is coming up in June, called the Relay for Life.
“It is a fundraiser for the Canadian Cancer Society,” he said. “We did it just before COVID and we’re supposed to do another one – we raised $25,000 for them and this year, the goal is $20,000.”
