Every student needs at least seventy-five service hours to graduate and although sometimes it can be fun to get together with your friends to clean up trash on the side of the road, one creative Atholton student provides an alternative.
Eleventh grader Toni Falodun has created a perfect way to get service hours, providing students with a fun and productive way to give back to their community
“Cards for Hospital Patients” (CFHP) is a new club at Atholton High School that welcomes all grades to make cards for children in hospitals. Their meetings are twice a month, usually after school in room G209.
Toni Falodun, president and founder of CFHP, started the club “to give students a way to get service hours and actually give back to the community.”
The club is also important to her on a personal level because “when [she] was younger, [she] used to be in the hospital a lot.”
Falodun went on to say, “I know that receiving cards was something that would make kids inside of hospitals really happy, and so I thought this club was a great opportunity to do that.”
Falodun also highlighted the joy hospital patients can get simply by receiving a card, even ones made by people whom they have never met. It is the fact that the patients know they are being thought of and prayed for that can make their whole day.
“Students should join this club because it gives back to the community, and it makes the kids really happy,” explained Falodun.
Among President Falodun, CFHP has an incredible, female-dominated executive board. All of them are eleventh grade girls, determined to put smiles on the faces of children in hospitals. Elections for the executive board required interested students to prepare a speech to deliver to the club.
After that, club members voted for their top candidates via Google Forms. Elections were held on November 14th, and joining Falodun was Madison Salib as the Vice President, Lydia Mulu as the Secretary, Fahima Shaikh as the Treasurer, and Abby Kearny as the Social Media Manager.
All executive board members of CFHP highly encourage more underclassmen to join the club so that it can continue after this group of juniors graduate next spring.
“We hope this club can continue to be active after we graduate,” said Vice President Madison Salib.
“But at the moment, we don’t have underclassmen, so it’s really up to them if they join to continue the club once we leave.” Salib additionally put emphasis on how the club can be easily joined.
“Honestly just ask someone in the club or come to a meeting, and we will gladly add you to the GroupMe,” said Salib.
Club Treasurer, Fahima Shaikh, also encourages people to join CFHP and stated that “it is a great way for people to earn service hours by doing something sweet and nice for others.”
Shaikh also said that she loves how the club allows her to “use [her] artistic abilities on the cards,” to brighten the days of the hospital patients.
Ironically, there is another very similar club at Atholton High School that’s called Sunshine 4 Cancer Kids Club, and is run by Juniors Aairah and Aleeza Rahman. This club makes cards for children with cancer, and meets around twice a month in room C146.
These card-making clubs provide exciting and crafty ways for all high school students to earn service hours, and get involved in their communities, all while putting smiles on childrens’ faces. To any students out there who still need service hours, these clubs provide the chance to earn them in an enjoyable, yet beneficial way.