Hawthorn students take part in WE Volunteer Now program
Submitted by Allstate Insurance Company
Approximately 50 students from Hawthorn Middle School South attended WE Day at the Allstate Arena recently.
To earn a ticket, students had to volunteer for one local and one global project involving service learning. Student Council members as well as students in the school's Social Entrepreneurism class completed more than a dozen local projects.
Local projects included: sales of candy, jewelry and crafts; hosting a Veterans Day breakfast and entertainment for area veterans; donating linens and undergarments for Midwest Veterans Closet; collecting donations of winter weather gear and toys for families in need; creating an informational campaign to educate students about cyberbullying; and more.
For the global project, through its partnership with WE Volunteer Now, an initiative of WE made possible by The Allstate Foundation, the Student Council Executive Board spoke with local Allstate agent Bryan Dinklenburg and representatives from WE to identify social causes the students felt passionately about, and decided to host a "Water Walk," which will bring fresh water troughs to areas in need of fresh water sources in other countries.
Each participant in the Water Walk will collect sponsorships to raise money, and then will walk around a milelong course with a water jug on their head, signifying the difficult journey women and children are forced to make each day in certain parts of the world just to get drinkable water. By having water troughs, women and children can save as much as four hours per day - time that children can spend being educated, and women can spend being productive in other ways.
Through WE Volunteer Now, and because of Dinklenburg's involvement, The Allstate Foundation awarded Hawthorn Middle School South a $250 grant to undertake this project. The current plan is to do this event around Earth Day, April 22nd.
HMS students also regularly volunteer at Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, packaging food for children in 70 countries across the world.
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