by ERIN CLARK and THOMAS PUGH - Key Club members sell Valentine’s Day and finals week bundles to raise money for Open Doors.
WESTFIELD, Ind. (Feb. 16, 2019) – Organizing bundles of stickers, candies, hearts and love, Key Club members prepared to distribute a variety of bundles for their Valentine’s Day and finals week fundraiser. Since returning from break, Key Club members had worked on putting the new event together.
“Our project ever since we got back from break has been our class service projects, the Valentine’s and finals bundles,” executive member Cecilia Leber (11) said. “All the groups wanted to do something Valentine’s Day-related. One of our members in his entrepreneur class made stickers and wood blocks, so he wanted to do something with that. Another class wanted to do some kind of candy gram with chocolates and notes and stuff, so we ended up combining that with the bundles idea.”
Mibhar Zagoya (12), the entrepreneur student behind the stickers, directed other features of the bundles, including delivery and production.
“Directing it was stressful, because this was the first time for me in terms of doing something like this,” Zagoya said. “It was difficult to keep track of everything. Keeping track of how to deliver the orders, and then getting enough people to help Key Club put it all together was hard. There were a lot of bundles, around 300, that we had to make with hearts, candies and stickers.”
This task became even more stressful with the inclusion of finals bundles, groups of candies and trinkets, intended for parents to buy for their students during finals week.
“The finals bundles were Ms. Howrey’s idea,” Zagoya said. “Lots of parents are buying things for their children, and finals are coming up, so everyone was like, ‘Hey, we should do this,’ so she sent out the Valentine’s bundles and then the finals bundles announcements. The Valentine’s bundles sold, but the finals bundles sold a lot more, so Ms. Howrey really knew her target.”
With the combination of advertising and successful sales, Key Club raised over a thousand dollars.
“It was the first time we had done it, so we weren’t expecting a lot of money, and we weren’t expecting people to actually buy a lot of bundles,” club member Bushra Al-Fateen (12) said. “They did though, and that was really exciting.”
Key Club hosted a celebration meeting at the end of February in honor of the funds raised, during which they will present the proceeds to Open Doors, a charity that supports families in need of food, clothing or toys.
“We had worked with Open Doors in the past,” Leber said. “With the food drive, we actually took a trip over there and helped sort the food we collected, so we just wanted to maintain that bond that we shared with them.”
Events such as this provide for a variety of experiences that make the club all the more appealing to its members.
“Key Club has a lot of different volunteer opportunities,” Al-Fateen said. “We also help the school with almost everything that they do, and not a lot of clubs have the opportunity to help both in and outside of school.”
While Al-Fateen focused on being able to help the school and community as a whole, Leber displayed her satisfaction at seeing how Key Club projects affected individuals.
“I was helping handing out the bundles on Valentine’s Day,” Leber said. “It was very satisfying seeing how excited people were talking about them, especially with the memes too, and getting people very happy to be a part of what we’re doing and giving them a reason to be excited to support us.”