While the juniors were busy taking the ACT free of charge on April 23, the rest of the students were circled up around Harvesters bags and stacks of boxes.

Administration created a way to keep the day on its regular schedule for students not taking the test. They called upon the Practical Leadership Class who, with some help from Link Crew, organized a service project where students folded donation bags for Harvesters as part of their Stamp Out Hunger campaign.

The entire Harvesters event was planned and run by students.

The plastic bags had to be folded a certain way with an envelope in the middle. The bags will be placed on peoples’ doors by the U.S Post Office so canned goods may be put in the bag or donation money may be put in the envelope.

“Harvesters sends out 500,000 bags per year and we did over 60,000 today,” Assistant Principal Brett Coffman said. “This is pretty good considering we did it in four hours.”

Overall, the service project was a great success. Not only did students have the opportunity to help their community, but there was also a substantial improvement in attendance at school for the junior testing day.

“I think this event is good because it shows that we can all help people and that our high school can actually do charity work and help those who need it,” sophomore Hailey Stigger said.

Senior Olivia Lewis said her group’s success was in their teamwork. “I think I did a thousand bags,” she said. “My group kept running out, so they kept giving us more boxes.”

Due to the success, the administrators plan to do something similar next year.

“We always want to keep a community component and we want to make it different each year to keep student interest,” Coffman said. “We want to keep the day as regular as possible so students are still coming to school, still getting something out of school and helping the community on this day.”