Shoe Drive supports SAVE Thrift Store

Huntyr Woolley, Reporter

The Distributive Education Clubs of America (DECA) club students have been lending their helping hands this school year, assisting many families in need. In the second week of December, the students hosted a shoe drive. Seahawk students were provided a drop box to drop the new or gently used shoes they wanted to donate and DECA heavily advertised the event with stickers and posters around school.

“I don’t know how many pair of shoes, they did well, they had a big box full to donate to the thrift store,” John Selfors said, DECA manager and Marketing teacher.

DECA donated the shoes to SAVE Thrift Store, which is located below the front entrance of the school. SAVE  helps provide scholarships for Seahawk students and also helps friends in the community. The DECA students who participated came to the reality of “walking a mile in someone else’s shoes.”

“The profits from the SAVE Thrift Store come back to Peninsula High School in the form of scholarships,” Selfors said. “A group of three, Gabby Wiltse, Dani Dantche and Will Hopkins, they decided to create the shoe drive to help benefit SAVE Thrift Store.”

The seniors who created the project knew that it was an easy way to profit the SAVE Thrift store, as well as themselves for scholarships. Their fellow classmates will also gain advantage from the scholarships provided.

“I think my students benefited because they got the sense of organizing a community service event and giving back to the community which is important for them and then obviously anybody that goes to the SAVE Thrift Store; you can buy a nice, gently used or brand new pair of shoes, for a low price, so really, you get all sorts of benefits. And then the senior class benefits because they get money for scholarships. So it’s a win-win-win situation,” Selfors said.

Selfors enjoyed seeing his students work so hard to be a helpful contribute to the community. It really helps his students expand their helping hands in the community.

“It’s been great. Students of groups of three do all the community service projects so we had seven or eight very successful community service projects,” Selfors said.

On top of all the hard thinking work from conducting the entire project, the students write a written manual of their community service and submit it into the state DECA for the project competition.

“They organize a community service project, they execute it, then they write about it, and then they present it,” Selfors said. “It’s a great culminating project for our program.”