Youth for Refugees donates collected items to Kansas City International Academy
The club donated school supplies and time alongside National Honor Society Members
By Abby Doughty
Picking up a large box full of school supplies, senior Annie Myers drops off supplies donated to a Youth for Refugees school supplies drive at Kansas City International Academy. “When we went to drop off the donations, I was excited to see where and to who they were going to,” Myers said. “It’s one thing to bring in pencils and paper to school, but actually seeing how it’s directly impacting the kids is an entirely different experience.”
September 30, 2018
The Youth for Refugees club donated school supplies and helped sort clothes Friday morning at the Kansas City International Academy.
According to senior club member Noah Smith, Youth for Refugees is “an organization to help students from around the globe that are immigrating to the Kansas City Area.”
The Kansas City International Academy (KCIA) is a charter school for immigrant children from kindergarten to eighth grade. KCIA works alongside the community to gather supplies and support for the students.
Along with the rest of the girls in the group, senior Ashlyn Windmiller worked in the coat closet, sorting the community’s donations into different sizes for the less fortunate students and families at KCIA.
“In the Kansas City Metro Area, and really in any intercity area, you have a lot of underprivileged kids and families that can’t necessarily afford clothing items,” Windmiller said. “We are taking donations from people and we are sorting them out to make it easier for people to have access to items that they normally wouldn’t have on any other occasion.”
According to volunteer coordinator Nikki Snyder, the school’s 600 student population is very diverse.
“We have about 17 different languages and the translators can translate 16 of them, so we are pretty lucky,” Snyder said. “If we didn’t have them we wouldn’t be able to do what we do.”
KCIA is always looking for more donations from the community to help some of the less fortunate families at the school. According to Snyder, the school always needs more shoes, belts, underwear, and hygiene products. Thankfully, the community has been helping significantly.
“That is my favorite part of this job,” Snyder said. “That there are so many people in the community that want to help.”
The Youth for Refugees club has been a way for Mill Valley students to reach out to the community and see life from other people’s points of view, according to senior Noah Smith.
“I just thought that the club is a really good cause. I thought it would be interesting to give back to the kids to like sometimes learn their stories and to be a part of something that I never thought would be possible,” said Smith.
