Compassion Club and Project Poverty Collaborate on Bags of Hope
Photo Credit: Compassion Club
Eric Hamber’s Compassion Club and Project Poverty recently collaborated on Bags of Hope, an initiative to fill reusable drawstring bags with essentials to donate to the Downtown Eastside Women’s Center, a safe space for women and children that provides nutrition, support and necessities.
“Our main focus was on giving back [during] the holiday season, and [to] provide essentials during a harsh winter time.” said Tiana Ho (12), the co-president of Compassion Club and the vice president of Project Poverty. “It replaced our shoebox project,” Ho noted. Compassion Club’s shoebox project repurposed members’ shoeboxes and filled them with goods to donate, essentially turning the shoeboxes into care packages.
However, Compassion Club had found the shoeboxes inconvenient for donees. “They’d probably end up getting worn down and thrown out anyway,” Ho explained. Luckily, Ms. N. Ho (Textiles), Compassion Club’s teacher sponsor, had received a shipment of pant legs from Arcteryx and suggested that the club partner with Seams of Love, Hamber’s sewing club, to create reusable drawstring bags.
The process to create and fill these bags involved many students from different clubs and volunteers. Seams of Love sewed the bags while Compassion Club and Project Poverty worked to pull drawstrings through them. They also met with volunteers to evenly distribute donated items into these bags. “We had socks, notebooks, pens, kleenex, highlighters, scarves, toothpaste, lotion, shampoos, and conditioners,” listed Nicholas Mann (11), Project Poverty’s president.
The executive team worked hard to collect donations from the students at Hamber. “We [collected] donations over the lunch breaks over the span of one week, and we had volunteers going around the halls spreading awareness for the cause and asking for donations,” Ho explained. “We also had a station in the atrium where people could come and drop off donations as well.”
“Our main focus this year is collaborating with a bunch of different clubs from Hamber,” said Arianna Tham (11), the treasurer of Project Poverty and social media manager of Compassion Club. She explained that Compassion Club and Project Poverty shared many executives. “It was better that we had more hands because we ended up making more to donate,” Mann added.
Overall, Bags of Hope was highly successful. “It beat what we had anticipated, it almost doubled what we did last year, and it’s something that we can continue [for] future years,” expressed Mann.