By Steve Oldfield
Children, Inc.
Bellevue High School students finished up a week of service this week by spreading out across their city and cleaning up litter in the rain.
Throughout the week, juniors and seniors volunteered at some of Greater Cincinnati’s most well-known charities, from Matthew 25 Ministries to St. Vincent De Paul and the Henry Hosea House in Newport.
They also invited the Hoxworth Blood Center to park their bus in front of the school for a day of life-saving donations.
“This week we learned there’s lots of great organizations everywhere that could use help from lots of kids,” said junior Gabbi Donathan.
A group of seniors spent months organizing the program they’re calling “Bellevue Service in Action.”
“The kids totally drove the bus on this one,” said Bellevue instructional coach Sarah Kunnen.
“They decided where we were going, who was going; they created schedules and they made almost every decision.”
In all, about 70 students performed more than 300 hours of volunteer work during the week. They plan to make Service in Action an annual tradition.
“Hopefully, 20 years from now, it’s still going on,” said senior Collin Duty, one of the organizers. “I’m sure I’ll send my kids here and hopefully, I can go up to them and say, ‘yeah I did this as a senior in high school, I’m the one that started this.’”
The seniors will be receiving Jefferson Awards from Children, Inc., for creating what the organization is calling the top service learning project this year in Northern Kentucky.
