Crossroads News
Community Awareness Class Holds Clothing Drive
Student action supports nonprofit serving homeless youth.
Ninth-graders from two Community Awareness classes recently organized a clothing drive along with their teachers, Hali Morell and Ken Rosen. The drive benefitted the nonprofit Safe Place for Youth (SPY), which provides services for homeless youth in Venice. The drive helped replenish SPY’s inventory of winter clothes, which were lost in an October storage fire.
“The clothing drive was a direct way for our students to get involved to help an organization in need that is helping their peer group,” says Ken. “Los Angeles has the highest contingency of homeless teens in the United States. Our students gained the insight that there are people their age in need in their community and that there are ways that they can help this population.”
Students created and hung posters throughout the 21st Street Campus to raise awareness for the drive and made announcements in their grade-level meetings. Over five days in early December, Crossroads community members filled bins placed around campus with gently used winter clothing and accessories.
The Community Awareness class is required of all ninth-graders as part of the Upper School Community Service program. The program is designed “to instill in students a lifelong pattern of giving, by helping them to develop a connection with the larger society.”
