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Adopt-A-Family provides for those in need

Student+Association+has+run+the+Adopt-a-Family+program+at+South+for+three+years.+This+year+40+third+hour+classes+raised+money+and+purchased+gifts+for+Grosse+Pointe-area+families+in+need.

Juliana Berkowski ’16 | Copy Editor

For the third straight year, Student Association (SA) has run the Adopt-A-Family program, giving underprivileged families in the district gifts, food and necessities to get through the holiday season. Originally, only North took part in Adopt-a-Family, but the tradition was brought to South in 2013.

“North and South both do Adopt-a-Family, so we take families in the North district and North takes families in the South district,” Adopt-A-Family Co-Chair Anthony Kolesky ’17 said. “The families write in and tell us they are struggling and need help, so we do whatever we can for them.”

This year, around 40 third hour classes helped to raise money and purchased food and gifts for the 13 families South adopted.

“This is the first year that every family is split up because we had so little families and so many classes that wanted to participate,” Kolesky said. “We had to take every single family and give them multiple classes.”
Communication was the hardest aspect of pulling off the program, Adopt-A-Family Co-Chair Harry Susalla ’18 said.

“It was important to make sure everybody knew what they were doing,” Susalla said.

Besides communication between classes and SA within in the school, there also had to be communication between SA and the families involved in the program, SA Adviser Laura Distelrath said.

“I’d say the communication was the biggest piece,” Distelrath said. “Communicating between SA and the different teachers and the different classes as well as sometimes the families between the students figuring out exactly what needs to happen and making it happen.”

Another difficulty was reminding students to bring in money, SA Senator Daniel Kuhnlein ’17 said. Kuhnlein created a Remind account to send messages to his class so they would not forget to bring in money.

One of the best parts about Adopt-A-Family this year was its ability to unite the community, especially since the people who received help were from the district.

“We typically think of Grosse Pointe as being a super-wealthy community and everybody being really well-off, but there are actually families that do need help and are struggling,” Susalla said. “So I feel it’s important because we need to be able to help and realize that people need help.”
Along with uniting the school to help those in need, Adopt-A-Family also gives families a less stressful holiday season, Distelrath said.

“This is something that helps (the families) create happy memories as well as actually getting material belongings.” Distelrath said. “And to have, whether it’s a day, a couple of hours or just a couple of weeks leading up to the holiday season, less stress knowing that they’re going to be able to provide for their family and be able to enjoy that time instead of being stressed about what they may not be able to bring or give.”

As far as delivery on Dec. 16, Kolesky said he is excited to visit one of the families and bring them their gifts.

“I think that it really helps for our South students to see what can happen when they give their time and their energy,” Distelrath said. “Being able to make those deliveries, to see the smiles on peoples’ faces, to receive thank you notes or just to hear stories about helping families to experience a holiday the way many of us do and kind of take for granted sometimes is important.”

Both Susalla and Kolesky agree the goal of Adopt-A-Family is to give struggling families the means to enjoy their holiday.

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