PAY IT FORWARD

Have you ever seen volunteers with red kettles and ringing bells at your local grocery store during the holiday season?  Every year, volunteers across the nation participate in the "Red Kettle Christmas Campaign" to help provide basic necessities and disaster-related help to millions.

Courtesy of The Salvation Army of the Carolinas

The Salvation Army, an evangelical part of the universal Christian Church and an organization making lasting impacts around the world, is committed to providing basic social services to those who are in need.

Although The Salvation Army may be most well-known for its Red Kettle Christmas Campaign, the organization also leads a number of other campaigns and events.

For example, The Salvation Army's Hawaiian and Pacific Islands Division sponsors an Annual Thanksgiving Dinner which brings together roughly 2,000 beneficiaries and 900 volunteers for a night of service and camaraderie.  This event is only made possible by volunteers who help prepare and serve the complete Thanksgiving meals, and local hoteliers and restaurants that provide the food itself.  This special event represents a large part of what The Salvation Army stands for in terms of service and community interaction.

Courtesy of The Salvation Army — Hawaiian & Pacific Islands

To get involved in more fun and rewarding volunteer opportunities for The Salvation Army, please follow this link https://volunteer.usawest.org/Home.aspx to view the different types of service options available.

Source

Hawaii has been faced with a serious homelessness problem for decades, with nearly 5,000 homeless individuals on Oahu alone. Of these individuals, many struggle to put food on the table every day.

The holiday season is a great time to celebrate and share food with family and friends. Every year, Punahou gives back and shares with the hungry in Hawaii. This past November, the Luke Center set a goal to fill an entire Hawaii Foodbank truck with canned good donations. According to Carri Morgan, the Director of the Luke Center, Punahou School collected around 10,000 pounds of food together.

Visit the Hawaii Foodbank website here

To help Hawaii's hunger problem, I volunteered with KEY Club to collect canned goods from the donation bins and bring them to the Learning Commons, where students could stack cans to create a display at the front of Cooke Library. It was rewarding to see the can structure slowly grow as the drive continued and students came together to give back to the community.

Marisa Nagata '18, another KEY Club member, reflected on her experience and shared, "Even when there were only a few cans in the bins, we were so happy because it meant that people took the time to collect cans and bring them to school. It's going toward a worthy cause, and it was so nice to see firsthand how much students care."

Student and teacher volunteers at the IHS Carnival