wkhsinteract
Interact Members participating in Community Trash Cleanup outside of school hours
As college application season rolls around all students have become familiar with the looming expectations and pressure that come with the phrase, “Volunteer Hours”.
Kilbourne students are lucky to have a few great resources to get involved in volunteering both during this fall’s application season and for the rest of the year. The two main volunteering clubs at Kilbourne are Interact Club and National Honors Society, often referred to as NHS.
Kilbourne’s Interact Club is an open, community-based club led by Mia Manning and Ayza Haque as Co-Presidents and Blake Balogh as the faculty advisor. There are no requirements to join, just a desire to get out and help your community. Interact chooses their volunteer opportunities by working in tandem with the Worthington-Dublin Rotary and researching locally to find the best opportunities for students. In the past they have organized and participated in volunteer events like My Very Own Blanket, Arts for Little Hearts, and other efforts where students can travel a short distance outside of Kilbourne to help the community out. Interact’s main goal, as Mr. Balogh puts it, “is to, number one get students experience with volunteering in the community but also just building students and citizens of the community that are willing to kind of give back.”
Giving back to the community is a crucial part of the Kilbourne chapter of National Honors Society’s goal as well. As a whole, the purpose of NHS for students is for “Students who do well at school and as leaders to also translate those skills to doing stuff in the community. We’re always looking for students to go out and enrich the lives of other folks outside of school.”
NHS is another Kilbourne-based volunteering club, but it is not open to everyone. There is a requirement and application process to get into NHS, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get involved with volunteering if you don’t get in.
Mr. Strausbaugh shared some sentiments about the need for dedicated volunteers in today’s world. He talked with us about how “organizations are looking for help” and he later elaborated, “They’re always looking for people to come in and help. And you never know who needs it. It’s really just a matter of asking around. There’s always going to be people and groups in need.”
Both of these organizations are great ways to get involved in the community because they have one crucial thing in common: group volunteering.
One of the best things a student can do to get involved is to assemble and group and do it together. There is power and fun in numbers of people who agree on what’s important and have a similar goal in mind.
Volunteering makes a difference in people lives. Mia Manning shared with us how volunteering has affected her life through a story of her siblings who were adopted through foster care and how volunteer organizations helped both her siblings and her family adjust and make the transition easier. She shared, “It was really exciting to get to connect with the people in charge of organizations like that(My Very Own Blanket), because I’ve seen their work throughout my life with my younger siblings, we had lots of gifts come in from people like that. So it’s good to kind of give back and see it recycle. It’s awesome.”
It’s easy to think about volunteering as simply another addition to your college applications or future resumes, but when students can find an organization with a mission they resonate with, it opens a pathway for a meaningful contribution that will ultimately give back even more then one puts in. Kilbourne is lucky to have so many resources and clubs available to volunteer with, so get involved today!