Service Project 4 Military
Contributed by Elk Rapids High School Honor Society

Stocking our gift boxes for soldiers requires an awareness of certain conditions and requirements. As purchases are made, please keep the following in mind:

• Everything must fit into a shoebox. Keep the sizes small.
  
• Since we are shipping into a Muslim country, no product can contain even a trace of alcohol. (Waterless hand sanitizers, therefore, cannot be sent.)
  
• Send nothing that will spoil, leak, or expand in shipping, i.e. no aerosol cans.
  
• Custom Forms will accompany every box listing contents and assessed value.

In Iraq, whatever the heat doesn’t spoil, the sand will. Further, sand fleas and other vermin are a horrible problem; therefore, all packaging must be tightly sealed. In conjunction with United Way’s “Youth Day of Caring,” our projected mailing date is October 25. At that time, NHS members will gather in the library to complete customs forms and address boxes. In the meantime, participants can begin by purchasing requested items from the list below. Drop off contributions or filled boxes in room 131 at the high school. Currently, I have 10 shoeboxes in my room for those who might like to bring in individual items instead of filling an entire box. Do not overlook cards and letters of thanks and encouragement. Soldiers consider personal notes and letters the best gift of all.

Ramen Noodles	Letters or cards	Cans of fruit
Popcorn (microwaveable)	Laundry soap	Non-aerosol insect repellant
Hot chocolate w/marshmallows	Razors	Hand wipes (may not contain alcohol)
Tall athletic socks	Toothpaste	Boot insoles
Beef Jerky	Shampoo	Cereal bars (hard granola)
Batteries (AA & AAA)	News and sport magazines	DVDs
Presweetened powdered drink mixes (individual servings or resealable containers)	Hard candy (to share with the children that follow them when they are in the city)	Phone cards (that can be used from outside the US)
Flea collars (to discourage the sand fleas)

Have a Heart

For the month of February, our community service committee puts on the “ Have a Heart” event, to raise donations for “ Building with Books” at our State Regional Conference. To accomplish this, we cut out large paper hearts of red and pink and sold them each for a dollar to students and staff. They were able to decorate them to their liking, as long as they were school appropriate, and then they were hung in our main hallway of our school for everyone to see. Each Student Congress member was required to sell five hearts. The hearts were sold for a week during our school lunch hours. Our goal was to sell 50 hearts, and we exceeded this goal by selling 100. I think this was a good project and I recommend this project to anyone. You could also do this during different months and use different shapes and patterns, for example: Easter eggs, stars, shamrocks, etc.

Cystic Fibrosis Servant Auction

The Cystic fibrosis servant auction is a fundraising activity to find a cure for cystic fibrosis. People sign up two weeks prior to the date of the actual auction, and then on the day of the auction, students will be auctioned off to whoever bids the most on them from the crowd. Each person in the crowd gets a number to hold up, so that their bids can be seen, if they are not heard. To be a part of the crowd, you must pay a door fee of fifty cents. The bidding starts at $5.00, and there is no limit on how high it may go. All money must be paid in full on that day with no exceptions. Also in the crowd is a group of “safety” people. The safety people are there to bid on someone if nobody else does. Major pitfalls to watch out for are to make sure you get a lot of people to be in the crowd so that you will have a variety of bids. The more people the better.

Can Food Drive

Around the holidays, Athens High School has an annual Can Food Drive. A place is decided on, for where the cans should be donated. We get the whole school involved in this project because we have two competitions. A count is made to see which individual classroom has brought in the most cans and a count is also made to see which class (seniors, juniors, sophomores, freshmen) has donated the most cans. This year, we put together another activity that involved more students to bring in cans. Our Can Food Drive goes on for a week and one night that week we planned an event called “Singled Out”. This activity is similar to the television show “The Dating Game”. We had two seniors (one guy, one girl) ask a series of questions to other students in our school and by the process of elimination, the two seniors had themselves a date. It tied into our Can Food Drive because instead of paying admission to get into this event, students paid with cans. Both the Can Food Drive and “Singled Out” had subcommittees. The Can Food Drive subcommittees were responsible for choosing a week for it to take place, contacting our chosen organization, advertising, counting cans, and loading the cans onto the truck, to be taken to our desired destination. The “Singled Out” subcommittees were responsible for reserving the gym for a night during the week, getting the two seniors, finding contestants to participate in the game, advertising, creating the questions, gathering people to help out at the event, and arranging the date for each couple. Both these activities were successful and the people receiving the goods were very much appreciative. For more information contact Emily Weslosky or Shawn DuFresne, (248) 823-3963.

The Right To Vote

Pontiac Northern High School’s Student Council recognized the fact that millions of Americans take their right to vote for granted. Therefore, during the 2002 gubernatorial election we had two goals, One goal is to make sure all of our classmates register to vote, and to exercise their right to vote when they are of age, and our second goal is to be a part of a drive to achieve the highest voter turnout in a non-presidential election. Each Student council member as well as members of the student body were responsible for obtaining fifteen pledges to vote on the November 5th election. We came close to having about 1,000 pledges from registered voters. We collected these pledges from family, friends, and also parents who attended our parent-teacher conferences at Pontiac Northern High School. We also requested of those who pledged to list a home phone number, which would enable us to contact them the day prior to the election to remind them of their pledge. Also, on the day of the election we called the homes of unsuspected citizens to energize registered voters their right to vote.

Tutorial Program

Throughout the school year the Sterling Heights High School National Honor Society runs a Tutorial Program for the Elementary and Middle Schools in the District. We are able to provide tutors for seven schools. Each school sets up one day, after school during the week for students who need extra help. NHS members sign up on the pre-scheduled days to tutor at that specific school. The day and time of each tutoring session never changes for any school so students always know when they are needed. We sent four to five students to the school to tutor.

We are able to service more than one hundred kids during the course of one month. The High School students seem to enjoy working with the younger kids. If you have any questions or would like more information, feel free to contact Ms. Callahan at 586/825-2754.

Turning Point

Turning Point is a shelter for battered women and children. In the past our high school student council has invited them to visit around Halloween, Christmas, and Easter. When the mothers come with their kids we have little games and activities for them to do. At Easter we have an Easter Egg Hunt in our cafeteria. Around Halloween we make Caramel Apples and at Christmas we have a visit form Santa!

The moms really appreciate this gesture and on a few occasions have even broke down in tears right in front of us. The kids enjoy themselves a great deal. It gives them a chance to have fun and bee carefree on a holiday that they usually do not have the chance to celebrate.

The only real pitfall is finding a time that is available for both the center and our members to come together. Other than that it is a great opportunity to help the community and make someone's day a little bit better and brighter! If you have any questions please contact: Mark Mikel.

Cutest Pet Contest

We had a "cutest pet contest" to raise money for several animal organizations operating on a non-profit basis. The candidates were staff and teacher's pets only. Each contestant had to submit a recent picture of their pet along with any information they wanted the students to know about their pet. The entries were to be made anonymously so as to not be a teacher popularity contest. However, we told our student council members that our experience with this contest usually ended up with teachers trying to sway votes, so to let what happens happen as it would increase the competition and increase the donations. As it turned out, this was the case.

Our council made voting boxes to hold the money votes by decorating shoe boxes with the pet's picture and name on the box. We then made a PowerPoint presentation of each candidate and ran it at lunches and during homeroom to promote the contest. The contest voting was held at lunch only and the boxes were monitored by council members. After the second day, teachers were passing out candy to sway voting as well as they were supplementing advertising with their own posters and fliers. They were also promoting their pet in their classrooms and at lunch. The competition became the fun and personal between the candidates.

We had one teacher who brought in $230 dollars for her cat by encouraging her family and friends to donate to make sure she won. She got her picture in the local newspaper along with a picture of her cat wearing the crown we had made for the winner. It was a great success for us bringing in $1200.00 during the week.

Paint the Town

Every May, Clarkston High School dedicates on an entire Saturday to Paint the Town. We find a family who needs the exterior of their house fixed up, but is for some reason unable to do it themselves (illness, money issues, etc). We have four subcommittees under Paint the Town: marketing, supplies, food, and landscape. We have a fairly small budget set aside because we get almost all needed supplies donated by local businesses. The marketing committee is in charge of contacting the newspaper. They make sure to explain to them to keep the owner of the house's name confidential and to list all the businesses that donated supplies in the newspaper. The supplies committee is in charge of getting supplies donated from paint to brushes to shovels, etc. The food committee is in charge of getting lunch donated by a local pizza business and the landscape committee is in charge of laying out the new landscape and getting plants and soil donated as well. We all receive shirts that say "Paint the Town" that get stained in dirt and paint, but create perfect memories. The owners of the house greatly appreciate our help. Paint the Town is the one of the main community service projects we do. Contact: Brian Zezula, 248/623-3600.

Silent Auction for Social Service

Saline High School has a three-day silent auction at our school where students, teachers, and other staff members bid on donated items. Members of a prearranged group divide up the town (and town near by) and go to stores asking for donations for the silent auction to raise money for a social service. Each item has a number. To bid on a product students look in a packet to see which number corresponds with the item. To bid the students fill out a slip that has their name and item number and phone number on it. After every day the committee looks through all of the bids to see who has the highest bid. The highest bidders are announced on the last day.

Band-Aids for Breakfast

The West Bloomfield High School freshman student leadership class created a community service project, Band-Aids for Breakfast, that proved to be a huge success! The Children's Hospital of Michigna was in need of fun, colorful, and unique Band-Aids. The Band-Aids collected helped to brighten childrens&Mac226; spirits and put a smile on their faces.The committee's approach to making this a more exciting and successful drive was to create a contest within the school. The class that accumulated the most Band-Aids received a complimentary bagel breakfast. Students and staff willingly donated numerous boxes of Band-Aids. If you have any questions or would like more information, feel free to contact Ms. Rosenthal in the student leadership room at 248/865-6799, extension 6874.

Holiday Food Drive

The Holiday Food Drive is a three-week process right before school is dismissed for Christmas break. This year it was held November 27th through December 19th. Donations could be made and/or after school in front of our main office. Acceptable donations were $3.00, 6 cans, or a brand new hat or pair of gloves with the tag still attached. Once a student donated one of the above items, they received a movie ballot. They were given the chance to vote for the movie of their choice. The movie was shown on the last day of school before break. This is our way of showing our appreciation to those who helped people in need during the holidays.
The Holiday Food Drive for 2001 is over now and it proved to be a tremendous success. We raised an outstanding amount of $1,943.04 for our benevolence funds! This is the most raised in the history of our chapter’s holiday food drives. Five hundred and sixteen cans were collected and donated to the Salvation Army. That is 270 more cans collected than the drive in 2000. Also collected 60 pairs of hats and gloves, which were donated to the Children’s Hospital. By all working together we helped to provide assistance to local needy families for several months into the New Year. This is an incredible accomplishment that we can come together as a school, and all take credit for it.

Bags to Belize

Thurston High School received information from a teacher at our school about a school that she helped build in Belize. She came to us and explained that the school was in need of basic supplies for the new students. Our Student Council previously worked on a similar relief project for Caracus after the floods. Our council agreed that we wanted to help and Representatives in student council created 90 care kits including new supplies as well as hygiene products. We also opened this project up to any other teachers that wanted to make their kits to send to Belize. Before packaging the kits up a representative of Student Council volunteered to write a note to the students in their native language of Spanish, explaining who we were and what we sent.

Christmas Carol

Every December we host the annual Christmas Carol. We bring in families from several area shelters to our school and put on a Christmas party for them. The night begins with the entry and check in of the families. We provide pizza and pop for everyone that attends. We have many different Christmas oriented activities going on all throughout the lunchroom. Such activities include cookie making, gingerbread house building, letters to Santa, crafts, pictures with Santa, and dancing. We have a student DJ it and play Christmas music throughout the night. Every kid that comes to the party receives a gift that is setup before the event by the shelter contact. We bring in other clubs to help us out like NHS, which runs an activity and the choir, which sings carols. It is a wonderful and spirited event. Some pitfalls are that everyone has to be well informed and know what is going on. Without the proper setup and communication the event will be a complete disaster. Also, you need to form backup plans in the event that the families are unable to attend. The night we hosted it we had bad weather and only half the scheduled families showed up.

Make-A-Difference Day

Make-A-Difference Day is a day set aside at the end of October for individuals or organized groups nationwide to make a difference in the community or in the country. We have participated in Make-A-Difference Day for several consecutive years, and we continued the tradition this fall with an activity that made a difference in our community.
Since the September 11 Crisis, we wanted to help in some way, but what better way than helping people within the community.

Member, Stephanie Zarodkiewicz, came up with the idea of helping some Port Austin community members who recently lost the majority of their belongings in the Crawford Apartment Fire that took place on August 12. Eight families had to find temporary shelter for a few months until their apartments were re-built.
We discussed the apartment fire situation, and it was unanimously decided to make “Welcome Home” baskets.
Each member was given a list of needed items and was asked to donate at least one, but most of the members donated more than one!

A total of $91.00 and over 300 small household items were collected. Gift certificates were also purchased from local grocery stores and restaurants and were added to the baskets. The baskets were presented to each family.
The “Welcome Home” baskets were greatly appreciated, and we are grateful that they could truly “Make-A-Difference.”

From School to School

1. Adopt-a-School – Your school can adopt another school in your area that is in need and provide services for them (Pick up trash, wash windows, paint walls)
2. Read to Youngsters – Teenagers volunteer to tutor or just read to a younger student on a regular basis.
3. Calling All Heroes – Football players and cheerleaders take one lunch period and eat with the elementary or middle school kids.
4. Play it Safe Elementary Bags- The high school makes the elementary school in their town play it safe Halloween bags and distributes them.
5. Don't Drink and Drive – Elementary schools make hand drawn fliers that promote not drinking and driving and put them inside the prom or homecoming tickets.
6. 8th Grade Night- Invite the junior high students in your area to attend an athletic event or play and have them bring a can of food for entrance and get them in at a discount rate.
7. Dance for Incoming Freshman – After freshman orientation, have a dance held at the school for the incoming freshman.
8. Santa Line – A phone to the school is used for the elementary students to call and tell Santa what they want for Christmas. NHS or Student Council students are honorary "Santas" and monitor the phone.

Within Your School

1. Club Cleanup – Each different club in your school is given a certain week of the year, or semester, and each day during that week at a certain time they must go around campus and pick up all the trash.  This could be done at many different times: lunch, before school, etc. q Buckle Your Bod   Promote awareness of the importance of buckling up. An easy idea is to hand out fliers, water bottles, make posters, etc. q Red Ribbon Day- This is a day where the entire school wears a red ribbon to show the awareness of AIDS.
2. SADD – Students Against Drunk Driving – This is an organization within the school where kids put on dances and other fundraisers to promote the prevention of drunk driving.
3. MADD – Mothers Against Drunk Driving – This organization is the same as SADD, but it's the mothers of the students who go to that school.
4. Car Washes – This is a simple activity that benefits both your council and community. The car washes can be held at the school, or somewhere else. It is a good idea to pre-sell the tickets if you can.
5. Date Auctions – This is an activity where a group of people (ex. Football team) is auctioned off at an assembly and the kids from the school buy them for a day or night date.
6. Blood Drive – You can sponsor a blood drive at your school and have students sign-up prior to the date of the drive through your chapter or council.
7. Christmas Bulb Tree Lighting – Have students sell light bulbs ($1.00 each) and hang the light bulbs in the front of your school in the form of a Christmas Tree and donate the money to a local charity. Our Grade 7 Team at Florenceville Middle raised $1200.00 and split it 50/50 to Christmas Daddies and a local family (cancer).

1. Can the Principal – The entire school participates in collecting cans and storing them in the principal's office. The object is to move him/her out of the office because of all of the cans.
2. Canned Food Drive – This is the basic can food drive where the school participates and gives the cans to a local charity.
3. Trick-or-treating – An event on Halloween where your council or chapter members go trick-or-treating for canned goods instead of candy. The cans are then donated to a local charity. It is also a good idea to leave pumpkins or another small gift at the doors you have visited.
4. Turkey Box – Around Thanksgiving the homeroom classes have a competition where they decorate boxes to look like turkeys and then collect canned goods in them. There is a prize for the best-looking box and also the box that gets the most cans.
5. Shoe Boxes for the Needy – Every 4th hour is given a list of items to find. It starts with a shoe box and other items needy families may need (ie. toothpaste, brush, deodorant, etc.) including things for children. The 10 classes with the most items in their box (may need multiple boxes) will move on to the finals. Ties will be sorted by quickest collection. Finalists will be given another list with bigger items on it. The first classes to compete the final list will be the winner and will receive a pizza lunch or some such reward. Rules and regulations:
   1. Items must be new, NO USED PRODUCTS!
   2. Drive is open to all of the teachers classes (1st through 6th hours) but only their fourth hour will receive the reward.
   3. Items may be generic, but not government issue (welfare issue)
   4. Items that are deemed type or brand specific must be what is asked for.
   Suggestions for collection: Teacher may give extra credit to give students' incentive; class may make a dollar collection with one person purchasing the things asked for
   
6. Pennies for Patients – Every year, our student council hosts a fundraiser called "Pennies For Patients." Four buckets are gathered and we write a name on each one for each class (freshmen, sophomores, juniors, seniors). Classes can also choose team names. The jars are placed in the library and over a period of one week, the students put their extra change into their class jars. The class who raises the most money gets a prize and the money is donated to the Cancer Society. It is a great student council project.
7. Penny Wars – Each class president (sophomore juniors, seniors) carries around a big water bottle for a week and everyone puts their change in it. pennies count as positive points and silver change or dollar bills count as negative points. Which ever class ends up with the highest number of points gets to decide which charity to use the money for. This way not only do we get money from students' desires to be good citizens, but we make money through class rivalry as well. People will bring to school and donate those huge jugs full of pennies they've been saving for the last ten years, specifically for winning the penny wars. It's also not uncommon for rival classes to stuff dollar bills into the jugs.
8. Grocery List Food Drive
   For our annual Holiday Food Drive, our student council puts a spin on things. The council members develop a "Grocery List" of food that a typical family might happen to go through over a month over the holidays. Classes get involved by trying to fill as many lists as possible. Each one is worth 350 points, with each additional item counting as one point. The other half is the community's involvement. We get brown paper bags donated form our local supermarket, and distribute them on doorsteps with flyers on them. We then collect all of the food from the area and put it into lists. All food goes to families of our high school students. Students and teachers deliver the lists to the homes the week proceeding Christmas, along with Christmas gifts for the little ones. It's a good way to get your middle school involved, as well as the community, while also giving back during the holidays.