WILSON – Students from Wilson High School took a day outside the classroom to help out their community.
Students in grades 9-12 took part in the high school’s second annual Day of Service on May 21. The footprint and scope of this year’s activities have grown considerably from last year’s Day of Service, which was held solely in the school.
This year, students volunteered at 12 different community organizations located in the village of Wilson, Niagara Falls and Buffalo.
“What you’re going to be doing today is going to make a difference for a lot of people,” High School Principal Paul Galgovich told students. “And at the end of the day, we’re going to take a look at everything we did, and hopefully you’ll be able to see that your acts today definitely did make a difference and have a lasting impact on other people.”
Throughout the village, groups also helped prepare flower planters, clean up Wilson Tuscarora State Park, wash Wilson Fire Company trucks, clean and organize at the Wilson Community Food Pantry, prepare for the newly improved Farmers Market at Brownies and prepare the grounds of the Wilson Historical Society for its Memorial Day events.
Sophomore Yeardley George and her group volunteered at Greenwood Cemetery Park, where students helped to clean and document
“It definitely felt like we made more of a change as a school this year, because we were more hands-on,” George said.
Outside the village, students cleaned up Martin Luther King Park in Buffalo, helped out nursing home patients at Niagara Falls Memorial Medical Center, worked with veterans to help with clothes closets and food preparation at Niagara Falls Gospel Mission and helped build beds for kids all across Western New York with Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s Buffalo Chapter.
Senior Brock Lepsch was one of the students who helped build beds at Sleep in Heavenly Peace. Lepsch said the Day of Service helped them to experience firsthand the importance and impact of their work on others.
“There’s lots of things that we take for granted in our lives, like something as simple as a bed, not every kid has one, not even in our own school district, so it was really eye-opening to see,” he said.
Photo captions:
Wilson High School students volunteered to help make beds with Sleep in Heavenly Peace’s Buffalo Chapter for children in need.
Students from Wilson High School volunteered to clean up gravesites at Greenwood Cemetery in the village. Some students also took pictures of the headstones and uploaded them to the BillionGraves app, which is the world’s largest GPS-linked cemetery data resource, designed to help people locate ancestor gravesites.
Wilson Central School District Superintendent Timothy Carter helps Wilson Fire Company President Pat Daul hose down an ambulance.