All donations from this service drive will be donated to help people of all kinds with reading, electronic knowledge, and to have the fun to dress up for Halloween. The service club drive was hosted by three Bishop’s clubs from October 16 to 20, 2023: Community Service Initiative (CSI), Cyber Assist Network, and Refugee Children’s Organization of Tech and Science (ROOTS).
CSI collected used Halloween costumes to donate to Stand Up for Kids, a non-profit organization in San Diego. Their goal is to end youth homelessness. Stand Up for Kids “is the most underfunded youth refugee organization in town,” said Director of Service Mrs. Jacqueline Gomez. She added, “every year we try to do something for them, whether it’s the Period Poverty Pads that they need, or the Halloween costumes.”
Cyber Assist Network, founded by Ryan Qin (‘25), collected electronics. Cyber Assist Network drives to “bridge the digital divide… The idea is to make technology more accessible to people, whether that be for people who don’t have funds to access technology or people who are more susceptible to scams,” said Ryan.
Ryan distributes the donated material to local organizations. He said, “for stuff we don’t know what to do with, for example printer parts, we gave them to Computers 2 Kids (C2K).” C2K’s mission is to ensure that everyone has the needed resources to access technology, the internet, and digital literacy for full participation in our society. Depending on their condition, Cyber Assist Network Will fix electronics and give them to schools.
“For stuff we do know what to do with, like laptops and keyboards, we keep them as inventory and use them in workshops or donate them to families,” Ryan added. Cyber Assist Network organized a workshop on circuitry and hardware in collaboration with All Girls Stem Society (AGSS), another Bishop’s club. A long term goal of Cyber Assist Network is “to create an application, or something interactive and enjoyable, to use that is also related to tech security and how to use a computer,” Ryan shared.
Lastly, Refugee Children’s Organization of Tech and Science (ROOTS), founded by Henry Hou (‘27), collected new or used books for children over the age of five. “Our club is about tutoring refugees who come from Africa and teaching them in all matters of STEM,” said Henry.
ROOTS will help African refugees who are currently in America on their vocabulary, speaking skills, and bring them up to date with the current public school standards. “We’re thinking of having regular tutoring sessions every few weeks for the refugees. [We’ll] probably have them visit campus and look around the science lab area and see what equipment they might be dealing with in the future to help them adapt with school,” Henry said.
There are a few more service club drives coming up in the holiday season and Mrs. Gomez was very excited to share them. They are: the Thanksgiving drives for both middle school and upper school, the Thanksgiving food drive, and the Giving Tree. Mrs. Gomez stated, “middle school advisors are going to be making Thanksgiving meal kits… The upper school students [are] going to be collecting as many backpacks as possible in advisory…” While the holiday drive for refugee students called the Giving Tree, “refugee students from different organizations write down their Christmas wishlist and anybody, an advisory, an individual, a parent can adopt the refugee off the tree and give them their Christmas wish list,” Mrs. Gomez concluded with.
A student can help tutor children, help donate items to help those in need, or help pick up trash. “I feel like academics are really important, but what goes with academics is knowing how to be a kind human being that gives back to the world that we live in,” Mrs. Gomez said.
