Parkway North Students Start New Club to Help Local Orphanages

In the beginning of second semester, sophomores Erin Armstrong, Hiran Bommireddipally, Helen Oh, and Adya Dave started a club called Kids4Kids. The club, sponsored by math teacher Michelle Goetz, has meetings after school in Goetz’s class. The main goal of the club is to help and meet with children in orphanages.
“We wanted to take a leadership role, and we thought that starting a club would be a good idea,” said Armstrong. “Helen came up with the idea to help out orphanages.”
The club already has 28 members, and their first project consisted of selling chocolate chip, gooey butter cookies, cake pops, and chocolate truffles. They raised $498 which will be donated to Caroline Mission Center. They have also been collecting soda tabs that will be turned into bracelets and given to children at the orphanages and money during basketball games.
“I’m very excited about how things are going,” said Goetz. “It’s very student run. They have chosen a couple different children’s homes they would like to support. They’re interested in supporting [the chioldren] not only financially, but also emotionally – to be a positive influence on the kids.”
The 28 members are mainly sophomores, but the group is open to anyone.
“[Joining the club] seemed like it would be a good experience,” said sophomore Paco Solorio. “I just felt I needed to be involved in something.” Solorio also hopes that the group will allow him to be “more social with kids. The more things you learn in life, the better.”
Despite the seemingly simple idea of being able to interact with orphanage kids, it hasn’t been that simple for Kids4Kids to find a willing orphanage. According to Goetz, people have to be 21 to actually volunteer at most orphanages.
“We would like to make connections with kids in orphanages, whether it’s through tutoring them in an instrument or sport,” said Armstrong.
According to Goetz, Kids4Kids is currently in contact with a couple orphanages that will allow the members to interact with the children there.
“I hope that we’ll make a lot of orphans happy,” said Solorio. “And if we get that far, maybe we can encourage other schools to do the same.”

By: Monyelle Asher  Staff Writer