Revere’s Red Cross Club continued their tradition of hosting a veterans donation drive to gift goods to underprivileged veterans in the community.
From mid-October to November 11, the Red Cross Club set out donation bins in hallways throughout the high school to collect goods. The goal was to gain enough essential supplies to create care packages for individual veterans at the Cleveland Veterans Association Hospital (VA). The drive was created three years ago when former student and club founder, Wesley Leong, assisted the club’s adviser, Bonnie Simonelli, in formulating the donations.
“We started basically right after we got back, after COVID. We didn’t have the veterans assembly, so the Red Cross Club thought another good thing to do would be to donate to the homeless veterans through the Cleveland Veterans Association Hospital,” Simonelli said.
The club’s vice president, Kimberly Wong, has a passion for the club and shared how much the tradition each year means to her.
“It has always been a Red Cross tradition to do this drive, so we already had connections and experience with setting this up, and it involves everyone in the Red Cross family,” Wong said.
The donations were unlike most drives where the goal is to bring in canned foods. While others could do this, the main items needed were things like T-shirts, socks, underwear, toothbrushes, soap, etc. The club had to find the right place to donate the goods for those veterans in need, and the Cleveland VA fit the bill.
“We wanted to find where there are homeless vets that get services, and the Cleveland VA Hospital is a big hub for this,” Simonelli said.
In order to gain enough donations to make the care packages, the club had to use various forms of promotion to get students involved. The club’s secretary, Junior Kavana Lokesh, described how she and the club worked together to promote one of their most important events.
“The club came together to make posters in the hallways, and we posted on our social media about the drive,” Lokesh said.
Another driving force that gets students involved and donating is that there is an extra-credit opportunity for some of those who donate.
“Social studies teachers will offer extra credit, and they do, for bringing in stuff for the bins in their individual classrooms,” Simonelli said.
Once the collection time is over on Veterans Day, the club hosts a meeting for all members to come together and create the care packages. The turnout for the club was positive and many members came to make the packages to send to the Cleveland VA.
“We each put some of the items into gallon sized bags, so it’s like an assembly line. We package them up, so we send down all the items packaged up into personal goodie bags,” Simonelli said.
The club runs three missions throughout the year to remain a branch of the American Red Cross and support them through various service projects. One will be coming up soon.
“We’re going to be doing a candy cane or candy gram fundraiser in the winter. All the money for each candy cane sold goes to the national Red Cross,” Simonelli said.
The club’s Veterans drive is the primary fundraiser they do throughout the year, and this year’s turnout was great and helped to support underprivileged Veterans in the Cleveland area.
