When COVID hit and school closed in March 2020, it felt like my entire world stopped. All my extracurricular activities, show choir, music, sports were all gone. While I had to take classes online and forgo extracurricular activities and outings with my friends, I was reminded of the people who have lost jobs, unable to buy food, pay rent, and not able to afford medicine.
As I was browsing the web one day, I came across the Catherine McCauly Center’s message about World Refugee Day in June. I have been volunteering at CMC before with shelving and helping with other things, but I had the idea of engaging the community and collecting canned goods/non-perishable items for the CMC food pantry. I started an organization called Take Action United through which I engaged the community to collect food items to donate to the CMC.
The first year, we had a goal of 1000 items which we more than exceeded. In 2021, we set a challenging goal of collecting 2021 items by June 20th. This required me to engage more people and organizations in the community. I encouraged my friends to collect items in their neighborhoods and also set up a collection booth at my high school. We exceeded our goal and were able to donate 2021+ food items and cash donations to the CMC. I want to continue to grow this food drive by holding fundraising events and engaging more of the community.
