Arizona Service Club uses JustServe to collect over 5,000 donated items

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By Joe Wirthlin, Church News

With the help of JustServe, students collected more than 5,000 items to assemble 300 hygiene kits that were donated to a nonprofit in the St. Johns community in eastern Arizona last November to provide essentials to those in need.

Nearly 330 middle school students collected the items during the first half of November 2023 under the leadership of 12 members of the St. Johns Middle School Legacy Leadership Club. Students in fourth through eighth grades engaged in friendly competition with their classmates to ensure their class donated the largest number of items.

The two winning classes – fifth and seventh – were given a “truancy day” where they could skip school and hang out at the Loft, a community center converted from a former youth detention center. Normally, the Loft is only open to students who have completed eighth grade but have not yet graduated from high school. Truancy day gave these younger students a chance to see what the Loft had to offer.

Marcia Ashton, a social studies teacher at St. Johns Middle School, noticed a change in her class of about 60 to 70 seventh-graders as they collected items for donations. “At first, it was for the competition,” Ashton said. “But as we collected more and more things and the kids got involved, it became a source of pride to do something for the community.”

Members of the Legacy Leadership Club at St. Johns Middle School posted flyers in the middle school hallways asking their classmates to donate items. After the donated items were sorted and placed into hygiene kits, about 30 members of the Legacy Leadership Club at St. Johns High School took the kits to CareAz, a nonprofit organization that provides essentials to those in need.

Raelene Raban, the sponsor of St. John’s High School’s Legacy Leadership Club, helped deliver the hygiene kits to CareAz. Along with her middle school sponsor Shayla Udall, she used JustServe to find a service project that would interest the students.

Raban said she uses the JustServe app as her first choice when looking for service projects for the Legacy Leadership Club. “I realized there was a need in our community because the kids really wanted to do something that would benefit the community.”

Udall said, “I was really impressed with the middle school students, not just the Leadership Club, but the kids who rallied behind it and understood, ‘Hey, we’re doing this for the community.'”

Members of the high school’s Legacy Leadership Club delivered the donations to CareAz. A CareAZ employee who accepted the donations from the students was touched to see how many donations were made. “He was just overwhelmed because it’s something that really benefits people who need it,” Raban said.

Randi Norton, director of the reentry and recovery program at CareAz, said working with a nonprofit and serving so many community members helps people realize they are “all in the same boat.”

“There is something magical about serving others just to serve others,” Norton said. “By serving others and the Lord, I can receive the ministry of our Savior through everything that happens in my life, through all the blessings I receive, and through the ability to help others.”

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