Leaders of the Food Justice Club and Asian Pacific American Club (APAC) create many fundraising opportunities for their local communities to take part in. These events help the clubs achieve their annual goals.
Senior Evelyn Chen and junior Jacqueline Gu, the heads of the APAC, celebrate Lunar New Year, demonstrating its importance to them by organizing a huge and entertaining fundraising event.
“We actually get a lot of donations from parents of people who have graduated, and we also host a lot of events where we sell food, so we usually have members donate food and then we sell the food to raise money,” Chen said.
Gu said the Lunar New Year celebration allows the club to engage with the community and generate increased financial support.
“Lunar New Year is a huge celebration. It is one of those events where the main focus doesn’t seem to be raising money, but we still manage to do that and have a lot of fun at the same time,” Gu said. “Our Lunar New Year event is just an event that students at the high school look forward to every year. It’s just fun for us to give back.”
Seniors Grace Sokolow and Gigi Walsh, leaders of the Food Justice Club, utilize the options they have for fundraising while still raising money and support from the community.
“We’re having a sustainable gardening workshop at the Brookline Teen Center in which people would pay to participate. That money would end up being filtered to the club and the Brookline Food Pantry,” Sokolow said.
Walsh said people can support her club’s goals without financial donations. The club can achieve their long-term and short-term goals slowly through volunteering efforts and showing admiration for what they are doing.
“Right now we are working on a sustainability program for the sophomores, organizing a cook-in to support a warrant article up for this year’s town meeting that would prevent major buildings or new development from containing natural gas infrastructure,” Walsh said. “So a lot of the stuff we do is not fundraising. You can support our mission without spending money.”
Sokolow said fundraising allows the club to support the community through its efforts to promote positive environmental change to Brookline and elsewhere.
“We want to reduce food insecurity and support efforts to do so in Brookline, therefore the sale was doing both; we are giving people food that they can grow in their gardens and then at the same time, we are giving money to the Brookline Food Pantry, to support our neighbors in Brookline who do not always have enough to eat,” Sokolow said.
Both clubs said they have the responsibility of spreading their goals and values throughout the community and raise money to do so.
“It is important to utilize what we have around us and share it with the community. That is a really cool way to help and it represents something we value,” Walsh said.