Dub Week: “Donate Your Best”
By: Natalie Eaton
Here at Jenks, we have a special group of high school students who dedicate their year to helping a great initiative. By volunteering, leading, and hosting fun events and fundraisers at the high school like the first annual Sadies dance last year, all of these actions and activities are meant to help many people who are in need.
Every year at Jenks High School, STUCO goes all out to create a fun and eventful week full of activities for students to participate in to help donate money to their cause. The initiative is to bring students and the Jenks community together to help support one common goal.
This year, STUCO’s nonprofit charity is an organization called Common Good Tulsa. This organization is a community hub in an area that lacks many resources, and helps give the youth in the area supplies and opportunities for young kids to succeed.
“They are called the forgotten zip code, 74127, because they are not quite North Tulsa but they are not quite Sand Springs,” says Britton Barnes, Philanthropy Chair for STUCO. “The area is classified as a food desert because their closest grocery store is six miles away, and most of them do not have transportation.”
To help the food desert situation, STUCO president, Macy Johnson, reveals that the group's goal is to raise money to create a commercial kitchen for the students at The Common Good.
“The hope is to provide food and more opportunities to the kids and to the community, says Johnson. “This is a huge growth year for us, we are trying to get as much community and district wide involvement as possible for this project.”
At first, the idea of creating a kitchen was taken with question as to how this could help problems at Common Good.
“When I heard we were raising money for a kitchen, I was like, how the heck is this going to help the organization?” jokes Barnes. “But, I started to realize how much economic opportunity this could bring to the community.”
The kitchen could be a great place for all ages. Barnes notes that people in the community have entrepreneurship and business goals, and this commercial kitchen can help them do that. It could also offer culinary classes for adults and high school seniors to help jumpstart careers.
In order for this goal to happen, Johnson and Barnes hope that Jenks students will show up full force during Dub week, and to the other pandemic friendly activities that will be announced soon.
“If you look at other schools, like Noman and Edmond, they are really successful with their philanthropy weeks because it is a community wide effort and big school district involvement,” says Barnes. Our goal is to get students more aware about Dub week before it actually begins.”
Due to the pandemic, donating money will have its challenges. Getting Jenks and the city involved is more important than ever. Johnson hopes to get STUCO’s name out into the community as much as possible.
“STUCO completely understands that Covid has affected families in a multitude of ways, so we are approaching donations by simply asking families to be involved in some way,” says Johnson. “Whether that be providing a donation at any amount, volunteering at one of our upcoming events, or even connecting us with a business.”
-To donate online, visit Stuco’s fundraiser here for more information!
-Instagram: jenks_dubweek