The Art of Giving at Riverbend High School

Throughout the school year at Riverbend High School, there are many opportunities for students, staff, and the families of Riverbend to give back to the community. 

The RHS clubs often host drives and fundraisers based on the students' ideas. Recently, Riverbend has hosted a handful of successful events that were all great ways to give back to the community, from helping local families, to assisting those living in developing countries.

SCA Sock-A-Thon

The Student Council Association hosted a school-wide sock drive to collect socks to donate to a local homeless shelter, Micah Ecumenical, located in downtown Fredericksburg.

A competition was enacted to encourage students to donate socks, providing a Chick-fil-A meal for the winning class. 

To say that this drive was successful is simply an understatement! Throughout the Sock-A-Thon, over 1,000 pairs of socks were donated.

The winning class was Mrs. Letellier's 3rd block class, and this class alone donated 228 pairs of socks!

Micah Ecumenical will now use the generous donations to help hundreds of homeless people around our community stay warm this winter.

Toy Drive

The Cancer Kids First Club at Riverbend was established to support and raise awareness for pediatric cancer patients and their families. Over the month of December, the club held a very successful toy drive to provide toys for children whose families may not be able to afford gifts during the holiday season.

The club members placed boxes labeled "toy drive" around the school for a couple of weeks, announcing on the morning news the event of the toy drive and asking students to consider donating new or gently used toys to benefit the cause. 

By the end of the collection period, over 100 toys had been donated by the students, faculty, and families of RHS. The Cancer Kids First club was able to use all of the donations to benefit the Toys for Tots program, run by the United States Marine Corps Reserves.

As a result of the generosity of the Riverbend community, many children were provided with gifts for the holiday season!

Water Bead Bracelets

Another successful event in the RHS community was held by the National Honor Society, which teamed up with the local nonprofit E3Kids to raise money for water filtration systems in developing countries. 

The members of the National Honor Society made and sold colorful water bead bracelets to the students of Riverbend, making over $200 throughout the week.

This money will be used to purchase water filtration systems for developing countries. This will benefit the people of these developing countries by providing more clean water, helping them health-wise, and providing better education opportunities for the children. This will help improve education because children in these countries often must walk long distances to collect clean water; therefore, they often don't have time to attend school regularly.

Holiday Hope Tree

Each year during the holiday season, Riverbend hosts a collection event to help local families. 

A Christmas tree is placed in the counseling department and decorated with various gift tag ornaments. Each of these ornaments lists specific items needed for donation to help a local family.

Any student, faculty member, parent, or guardian of a student can choose a gift tag to take off of the tree and then purchase the listed items to donate back to the counseling department to help the cause. 

The donations then get dispersed to the respective families, putting smiles on their faces and helping to brighten their holiday season!