Blaine Students Serving Their Community To Earn 'WE Day' Ticket
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) -- Eating is not allowed inside the library at Blaine High School. But if you are staying after school to make sandwiches for the homeless, that's just fine.
Julie Phillips is the school's youth service coordinator. She helps students find ways to connect with the community.
"They are making sandwiches, actually 700 of them, that will be donated to the Sandwich Project. That is a local organization that gets sandwiches out to the homeless in need," Phillips said. "We found out that even in our own school … there was 17 students classified as homeless. And when they found that out, it struck home, and a chord that was so strong in some students that they wanted to do something."
They aimed high last year for their WE Day global project, spending months raising money to help children in Africa.
"Our students chose Sierra Leone, and they chose education. Last year they raised over $7,000 to build a school in Sierra Leone," Phillips said. "It said 10,000 was required, we built 75 percent of it [laughs]!"
Mackenna Cristilly is a 12th grader who will attend WE Day as a speaker this year, taking the stage to share what her school's been doing.
"There's some people who just don't know where to volunteer, don't know what to do," Cristilly said. "There's a lot of teenagers who want to help, especially with something that's so, you know, close. There's kids who are our age who are homeless."
She believes these service projects are successful in turning the focus from "me" to "we."
Sixty students from Blaine High School are headed to WE Day on Tuesday at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center.
This year's speakers include Sabrina Carpenter of the Disney Channel series "Girl Meets World," and Paula Abdul. WCCO's Frank Vascellaro and Amelia Santaniello will also be there. Click here for more information.
