On Tuesday, December 3, Stevenson High School held the annual Give-A-Thon Collection Day. The National Honor Society (NHS) set the theme to be Minions this year.
Stevenson celebrates Give-A-Thon’s 40 year anniversary, providing an opportunity for the school community to come together and support families that may be struggling each and every year. Students and faculty members came together to donate gifts, food, toys, clothing, and essentials, which will all be donated to local families in need this holiday season.
“Collection Day is essentially the celebration of a month-long effort by our entire school community,” Ryan Dong, NHS executive board member ’25, said. “Students fundraise money to buy gifts throughout the entire month of November, and Collection Day is when every student gives their hand-wrapped gifts to be delivered to families.”
NHS decorates the Performing Arts Center (PAC) with festivity. Students and faculty members put up banners, lights, and balloons, while also playing holiday music. Students can see gifts being wrapped and getting ready to be delivered while walking from class to class.
“It’s really amazing to see piles upon piles of gifts all in one place – to me that’s the symbol of the power of collective effort,” Dong said.
NHS travelled out to the Vernon Township Food Pantry to hand out the food that they collected on Collection Day. They distributed gifts to over 1200 kids in surrounding communities and assisted 248 families in need.
If a student is not able to raise enough money for a family, sponsors and NHS members will use other plans to make sure that family will get the gifts that they asked for. NHS members understand the difficulty that comes from trying to raise enough money to buy gifts.
“It’s hard sometimes to make that money or to get that money,” Evan Park ’25 said. “So what we do is take all the extra money from all the other classes and we will go out ourselves to buy these gifts with the extra money that we got from other classes.”
NHS also planned collaborations with various clubs at Stevenson in an attempt to raise more money to cover gifts for groups that may not have been able to raise all their money. One such of these clubs was Pickleball Club, who hosted a Give-A-Thon tournament with an entry fee.
Students were also able to find more ways to be creative with selling this year as they were also given a variety of ways to promote their selling. This year, NHS hosted the Minion Market, a method students can use to sell items.
“Every Friday we highlighted sellers, and they were able to sell in the Wood Commons,” Park said. “These sellers were able to spread out their items on the table and really show everybody what they are selling so that they can make a good profit,”
The club also worked to partner with external organizations in the surrounding community. Their external outreach team worked to secure partnerships with corporate companies, such as Culver’s, Chick-Fil-A, and Dirty Dough.
“Clubs, sports teams, faculty all play essential roles in serving our community,” Dong said. “Hundreds of hours and shopping trips have been crucial in ultimately giving presents. No individual person or group can take credit for the event.”