High school volunteers bring joy Downtown

By Ashley Luthans

Central High School’s new volunteer club is spreading holiday cheer in St. Joseph.

Students in the club visited Downtown businesses on Tuesday afternoon to deliver homemade cards and treats.

“Unity for the Community” was created for the 2024-25 school year by two juniors at Central: Taevyn Hanson and Lily McClain.

McClain shared why they decided to visit local businesses.

”We really just wanted to spread some Christmas cheer, spend some time together as our community,” McClain said. “Like, our name is ‘Unity for the Community,’ so.”

”Unity for the community” was founded at the beginning of the school year with several goals in mind, according to Hanson.

”It’s a volunteer club we started at Central just to give back to our small businesses around St. Joe,” Hanson said. “And hopefully spread around St. Joe and just have an impact on the younger generations.”

McClain explained that they started the club not only to help St. Joseph, but also students at Central High School.

”We wanted to make an impact on our school ‘cause right now we don’t really have any volunteer like clubs or anything like that,” McClain said. “And typically whenever you’re a senior or upper levels in high school, you wanna look for volunteer hours for like your resume and things. So we just saw an opportunity and we wanted to take it.”

Since the formation of the club, students have carved pumpkins for Pumpkinfest, tutored at Parkway Elementary and have an upcoming time scheduled at Second Harvest Community Food Bank.

The club has plans to schedule at least two volunteer activities per month.