Seniors organize blanket drive for refugees

Seniors Claire Strickland and Sara Elzeiny worked with a local organization, Embrace Relief, to organize a blanket drive from Nov. 13-21, and collected a total of 10-15 blankets.

Strickland and Elzeiny’s cause supports the Syrian and Iraqi refugees, providing the refugees with blankets to keep them warm in the cold winter months.

“Embrace Relief provides a variety of opportunities for students or the community to come together, and they have drives to help certain causes,” Strickland said. “One of their causes that especially pertains to this season is the blanket drive.”

Elzeiny and Strickland wanted to start something at the school that would be lasting — they hoped to establish a tradition of a charity work by students.

“It actually wasn’t that much work,” Elzeiny said. “All we had to do was ask the people in the office and put up fliers.”

According to the Facebook event they created, most of the refugee families left their homes with the only items they could fit on their backs.

For a while there were little donations, so Elzeiny and Strickland stepped up their advertising.

“I feel like a lot of the advertisement can come from actually talking to people one-on-one,” Elzeiny said. “Sometimes we have to come up to them and tell them about the cause, and they’ll be like, ‘Hey, that actually sounds cool and I’ll bring a blanket.’ It’s about the generosity of the people who are donating.”