{"id":1533,"date":"2021-05-12T14:20:49","date_gmt":"2021-05-12T18:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/?p=1533"},"modified":"2021-05-12T14:20:49","modified_gmt":"2021-05-12T18:20:49","slug":"rhhs-seniors-volunteer-with-covid-relief-efforts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/rhhs-seniors-volunteer-with-covid-relief-efforts\/","title":{"rendered":"RHHS Seniors Volunteer with COVID Relief Efforts"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>by Emmy Ribero\u00a0\u00a0<em>Current\u00a0<\/em>staff writer<\/p>\n<p>The 2020-2021 school year started during the height of a pandemic. All sports and clubs were under extreme regulations and could only function under certain conditions. Despite these new obstacles to jump through, seniors Natalia Hlasko and Alex Ribero had an idea to try and better the community in times of hardship. They want to create a club that had the mission of helping the community with issues that came up because of the pandemic. Since the beginning of the year, their club has grown substantially in popularity, starting off with only a handful of members, to reaching their record high engagement at the end of the year with their spring cleaning donation drive.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhat inspired us to make this club is the fact that we saw many people struggling because they lost their jobs or couldn\u2019t afford necessities, so we wanted to help out the best we can.\u201d Says Natalia Hlasko, senior co-president. The girls saw their community struggling in a time of need, and wanted to do something to help them. \u201cWe know that the River Hill community would be willing to donate and make the time to help others.\u201d Natalia thought River Hill High School was the perfect place to create a club with the mission of helping others with COVID-19 relief. The River Hill community is caring and is willing to help those in need.<\/p>\n<p>Throughout this year, they have had a few events. They started with a \u201cCOVID care package\u201d drive that was donated to Grassroots, an organization in the River Hill community that\u2019s dedicated to helping with crisis intervention. They have 24-hour hotlines and shelters that act as a safety net for the community. Natalia says \u201cwe got so many donations that were so helpful! It was an overwhelming amount and we are so grateful and proud of our River Hill students.\u201d The officers of this club were super surprised that their first event was so successful. They had no idea that their drive would get as many donations as it did and they were very pleased with the outcome.<\/p>\n<p>They also had a guest speaker, a doctor at Johns Hopkins, talk about the vaccines and what the River Hill community can expect from them. This was held in February and there was not a lot of information released on vaccines yet, so it was really interesting to hear about them. This event drew a lot of attention from students and staff at River Hill. They then had their spring clothing and book drive, an event focused less on COVID but to help their community as a whole. \u201cWe are donating [the items] to the Salvation Army. They helped for COVID relief because they provided people with stability and necessities like clothing or sanitizer, masks, etc. Many people don\u2019t have access to these things because of COVID, so we wanted to make it easier for them.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Despite the pandemic being in the homestretch, the COVID-19 Volunteens club is here to stay. \u201cWe wanted to make a difference in people\u2019s lives. Therefore, we hope to continue this club for years to come in a way that everyone can benefit from it in a positive way.\u201d Natalia says. The overall mission of helping the community in times of need will continue, even if the pandemic becomes less of a prominent factor in those who are struggling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>by Emmy Ribero\u00a0\u00a0Current\u00a0staff writer The 2020-2021 school year started during the height of a pandemic. All sports and clubs were under extreme regulations and could only function under certain conditions. Despite these new obstacles to jump through, seniors Natalia Hlasko and Alex Ribero had an idea to try and better the community in times of&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":1534,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1533","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-feature"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/05\/volunteens.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1533"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1535,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1533\/revisions\/1535"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1534"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1533"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1533"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/riverhillcurrent.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1533"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}