Written by Tyler Atkins, Program Coordinator,
Hoop Dreams

This past fall six students from the Hoop Dreams Scholarship Fund mentor program participated in the Young Leaders Program. The culmination of the workshop portion of the program was for the youth involved in the program to create and execute a service project in their community. For their project they decided to do a clothing drive at their school, Howard D. Woodson Senior High School, donating all the clothes they collected to the local Salvation Army. The clothing drive was held from January 17th through February 10th. In preparation for the drive, the students met at the school to decide where the clothes were going to be donated to and delegate the various tasks for the project. Waynette created a flyer, Chanel contacted the Salvation Army to make sure they were accepting donations, and Michelle was designated as the speaker for the program at the January mentor workshop, and all of the students involved in the project helped promote the drive.

At the January Hoop Dreams mentor workshop Michelle and the rest of the students presented their service project to all of the students and mentors. In the presentation Michelle explained their involvement in the Young Leaders Program and the purpose of the project. During this time 200 flyers were distributed to everyone in the room encouraging everyone to donate and the locations of where the collection bins were. After the presentation at the mentor workshops all of the students in the Young Leaders Program hung 120 flyers around H.D Woodson promoting the drive and encouraging their friends and classmates to donate.

When the collection period was over all of the donated clothes were brought to the Hoop Dreams office downtown and the students came to the office to sort and count the donated clothes. They divided them into men’s, women’s, and children’s clothing and by size in each group. After sorting and counting the clothes the students had collected 485 articles of clothing that were then donated to the Salvation Army.