Starting on Nov. 28, McLean’s Leadership class initiated a week of giving, a localized effort in which students and faculty were asked to collect various donation items to go to SHARE of McLean, a family shelter located in downtown McLean.

As the holiday season approaches the Leadership students and teachers, Tzeitel Barcus and Woody Kidd opted for a service project that would extend the holiday spirit to each member of the community.

“We want to allow teens in the area that aren’t as fortunate as some of the students here at McLean […] a chance to celebrate the holidays,” Kidd said.

A unique aspect of this project is not only that it has been initiated by the community to directly impact members of the community; rather, it has students helping their fellow classmates. Although the district is known as an affluent region, Leadership would like to bring awareness to those who do not fit the generalization.

“[It is] about letting people realize that there are people living in poverty literally here at McLean,” Barcus said. “There are 80 identified teens living in poverty specifically in the McLean area so we wanted to make our students aware as well as have them make the entire school aware of these issues and hopefully put them to bed.”

Another aspect that has gotten Leadership excited for the service project is their ability to see their direct influence to benefit the holidays of their classmates.

“It’s like a local effort and we want to be able to support the area, I feel like community service is much more powerful when you know who you are giving to or you can see a real difference,” said Community Service Head and senior Grant Herzberg

This partnership with SHARE has been reoccurring. A similar initiative was taken last spring as Leadership sought to ameliorate issues faced by the homeless in locating toiletries.

“Last year we did specifically toiletries for the homeless so we kind of wanted to extend it,” Barcus said.

A unifying effort, the donation bags found in every 3^rd period classroom has given access to any student to be able to donate.

“We’re going to classrooms, we’re collecting the items, we’ve got an event associated with it, we got a reward if you get the most amount of points so it’s something that everyone can get involved in,” Herzberg said.