For Uniontown Area students, charity begins at school
It’s been said that charity begins at home. In Uniontown, charity begins at school, where Uniontown Area High School teachers encourage charitable acts as service projects.
Pam Howarth and her colleagues have sponsored some of the projects for a while and are just getting started on others.
“My (service project) efforts have been ongoing at least the last 12 years,” said Howarth, National Honor Society sponsor and a home economics teacher. “It’s just because I want the kids to know what they have. The amount (they donate) doesn’t matter, as long as it comes with the right intention and they want to help someone else. The outpouring is incredible.”
Howarth’s fellow home economics teacher, Patty Kilgore, organized her students for the first time this Christmas in collecting donations for a local animal shelter.
“We do these projects because so many of our students are so well off compared to others, even those little puppies and kittens,” she said. “The hardest part to any kind of community service or to getting involved is to say yes. It’s amazing but once you say yes, you have all kind of help.”
Lisa Nehls, Rotary Interact Club sponsor and physical education teacher, is involved throughout the year with a variety of service projects. Rian Davis, a computer teacher and swim coach, has a swim-a-thon coming up to benefit a scholarship fund in memory of a former student, the late Joseph Marcinek. Robert Caldwell’s three classes of academic world cultures have raised money for the Salvation Army through the Herald-Standard’s Give-A-Christmas campaign.
High school Principal Pete Bozick is understandably proud and wants to let the community know the good works that are going on behind the scenes at his school.
“I think they are great. Those kids go out of their way to try to contribute to the community. They are going to keep doing this. The teachers are very supportive, and the kids look forward to it. The teachers deserve all the credit, and the kids deserve all the credit. They do it all on their own,” he said.
Bozick said he was impressed with the level of participation and awareness among the student body this past Christmas during the promotion of several projects.
“They want to support them and want to do good. I think it says a lot about the misnomers people have about teen-agers. This should, hopefully, show them there are a bunch of good kids at Uniontown, and the state of affairs is in good shape for these kids,” he said.
Bozick said he noticed a lot of students participate, even if they had little to give and actually could be deserving of the help themselves.
Students of Howarth and Kilgore teamed up in the recent holiday season for the Great Bethel Baptist Church’s Operation Christmas Child: Love in a Shoebox project. Howarth said the National Honor Society, with the help of the child-care students, filled 75 shoeboxes with a variety of items.
A significant project by the National Honor Society in 2001 was a blood drive in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
They repeated the blood drive this past Sept. 21 and decided to direct the effort and other fund-raising to Colby Cole, a Fayette County child who has a rare form of leukemia. Howarth said the National Honor Society, Rotary Interact Club, Spanish club, Tomahawk school newspaper and individual classes joined forces to give the boy’s family a $1,500 donation in December.
Howarth said an important project by the National Honor Society concerns raising money for the Caring Team for Children, a project affiliated with the Pittsburgh Steelers and WTAE-TV Channel 4 news that makes health insurance available to uninsured children.
She said the students go into the community to raise the funds, which this school year by the campaign’s end in December amounted to $2,973.
For another project, Howarth’s students gave bags of Christmas presents to two children and two teen-agers through the Salvation Army.
Kilgore’s students started right before Christmas to collect toys, food and other items for the animals at the Noah’s Ark Humane Society in Hopwood. Her daughter, Lori Coffman, who was at that time a member of the organization’s board, wrote a poem, “The 10 Days of Christmas,” that asked for various items on the animals’ behalf.
Student Laura Kish, with some help from classmate Kendall Sisler, shared the poem with the student body each day of the project. Teacher Shelly Crothers’ students also donated.
“I had two trunkloads of things to take to Noah’s Ark,” Kilgore said.
She and her students participate in a spring daffodil sale for the American Cancer Society and a winter carnation sale for the American Heart Association.
Nehls can’t help but involve the Rotary Interact Club in service projects. The club has three major projects and participates in a number of smaller projects throughout the school year.
“Ours is a service club so that’s all we do,” she said.
In the fall, they hold a dance to benefit a local soup kitchen and have raised about $800 a year in the past few years.
For the first time this school year, the club sponsored a successful “penny war,” a fund-raising competition of sorts that Nehls explained is more than a coin collection.
Each class collects pennies and gets one positive point per penny. Others outside the class can contribute to the collection, but when they do so with currency higher than a penny, the class gets a negative point.
The “war” was all in fun, and Nehls said it worked out well and probably will be repeated.
In one week in November, the effort raised $2,400, which went to the United Way and Colby Cole.
Their third major effort is a candy cane sale, which brought in about $1,000 for the Make a Wish Foundation.
The club also participated in the Salvation Army Angel Tree and bell ringing for Christmas.
They will take part in a project during Valentine’s Day for the American Heart Association and in the spring for the Easter Seals.
“I think it makes them realize how lucky they are and how their actions help people not quite so fortunate,” she said.
Davis announced the next swim-a-thon will be held Saturday, May 3, for the benefit of the Joseph Robert Marcinek Jr. Memorial Scholarship.
The scholarship first was presented in 2002 by a foundation formed by Marcinek’s family.
The award is for $1,000, and Uniontown Area High School students/athletes are eligible.
Marcinek of Vanderbilt was 21 and a student at the University of Pittsburgh when he died Sept. 29, 2000, in an apartment fire in Oakland.
He was a 1997 Uniontown graduate who was active in the high school, serving his junior and senior years as class president.
Davis said students and community members participate in the swim-a-thon, pledging money per lap for the total swim. He said the swim team wanted to get involved.
“They know he (Marcinek) was a swimmer, went to UAHS, was a member of the band and some clubs and (was) really involved in school,” Davis said.
“I would like to continue. If we can do this every year, we would like to help them out.”
Caldwell’s academic world cultures students contributed to the 2002 Give-A-Christmas campaign, may be best recognized by the Christmas star mascot Sparkle.
His three classes collected about $600 as a group in four days of this recent holiday season.
Caldwell said this was the second time his students participated in the effort, and they exceeded their goal of $500.
He said they would probably do it again.
“Being a world culture class, they learn it’s important to be involved in their culture,” he said.