R-Jeneration: Meadows students honor shooting victims with kindness

Giving back to the community is just what they do.

The Spanish Club at The Meadows School has begun a project in honor of the victims of the shooting in Newtown, Conn. The project, named “26 Acts of Kindness,” began in January after adviser Kathleen Small introduced the idea to her students.

Small got the idea over winter break.

“There was so much about it on the news and I saw the vast amount of things being sent to Connecticut and I thought to myself, ‘They don’t need anymore things, they just need good wishes.’ ”

The club had a free bake sale for The Meadows Upper School. The bake sale was a huge success, club President Alexis Hilts said.

“When we were setting up the tables with the baked goods I thought that there would be a lot of food left over. But during the 10-minute snack break, there was a constant flow of students, and by the end, there was absolutely nothing left,” Hilts said.

Second, they traveled to Red Rock Canyon and picked up trash along a trail.

“It’s surprising to see how much trash is really present in an area that looked clean,” Hilts said. “It felt great to give back to the community in different ways such as helping the environment.”

Next, the club gave lunches to secretaries at The Meadows to thank them for their hard work and their kindness to students.

Another act is club tutoring every Monday after school.

The members of the Spanish Club are no strangers to community service.

“We always do community service,” Hilts said. “We went and volunteered at Catholic Charities for Thanksgiving and bagged up 1,300 bags for those in need.”

In the future, club members plan to go to Three Square to package lunches for needy.

They have packed lunches before, but this time, it will be in honor of the 26 Newtown victims.

“We have gone to Three Square multiple times and packaged bags for children who do not have food for lunches or anything to eat on the weekends. After volunteering there, we all felt tired yet extremely proud. It’s an amazing feeling to know that we’re helping hundreds of children. Three Square is an organization that we all enjoy volunteering at and will continue to volunteer at in the future,” Hilts said.

The Spanish Club cares about how their 26 Acts of Kindness will affect their school.

“We would hope that it inspires others,” Hilts said.

Added Small: “We want to show the people in Connecticut that by taking a semester to accomplish these 26 acts, the people they’ve lost have not been forgotten by people as far away as Las Vegas.”

Small wants those in Newtown to know that the Spanish Club’s members feel for them and for their loss. She hopes they will see that.

“Our school is not about fundraising and collecting money, it is about giving our time. The Meadows School’s mission is showing students how to give time and that is what this project is all about,” she said. “We are giving out time to honor those who have fallen in Connecticut.”

Spanish Club members are documenting everything they accomplish and plan to send a scrapbook to Connecticut.