Donation drives around Blair

This holiday season, in the spirit of giving back, Montgomery Blair is currently holding several donation drives and collections to help out the community.

The Student Government Association (SGA) is in charge of both the food and toy drive this year. The food drive is accepting donations on Blair Boulevard during lunch, in the SGA office and donation boxes set up in department offices. Food collected will be going to the Manna Food Center, a local organization dedicated to ending hunger in Montgomery County.

toy drive poster

Photo: A bilingual poster for the Toy Drive.

A bilingual poster for the Toy Drive. Photo courtesy of Young-Bin Lee.

The toy drive will be accepting toys from December 10 through 14. The toys donated will go to Toys for Tots, a non-profit handing out toys to local communities. The SGA is not only accepting toys, but also money to buy toys. Coin collection boxes have been placed in all department offices. "There are money boxes being put in every department to collect any change," Sophomore SGA member Yvan Djoumessi said. 

The SGA is spreading the word about these drives by putting posters in different languages around the entire school. Different members who knew these languages wrote the posters in an effort to be more inclusive. "We wanted to reach out to the ESOL (English for Speakers of Other Languages) students a little bit more, we want to get everyone involved as much as possible," Senior SGA member Kayla Malone explained.

In addition to the drives the SGA is hosting, the ESOL department is also in charge of their annual coat drive. Blazers with unwanted coats, hats or any winter clothing can come to the ESOL department in room 153 to donate. The articles of clothing will be directly donated to students at Blair. Those in need can take donated coats directly off the rack in in the ESOL office. "Anybody who knows anybody who needs a coat can just walk over to the ESOL office and get one," ESOL teacher Nicole Levesque said. Levesque encourages reluctant students to take the coats, even wheeling the coat rack into ESOL classes. "Sometime [students] don't want to say they need a coat, but when you bring the rack into the classroom, then they'll take it," Levesque explained.

donation coat rack

Photo: The donation coat rack is located in the ESOL office.

The donation coat rack is located in the ESOL office. Photo courtesy of Young-Bin Lee.

All drives will benefit the Blair community in the coming weeks.