I joined Poudre High School’s Service Club as a sophomore, after my history teacher invited our class to help sustain the fading organization. My previous service experience was limited to Girl Scouts and the occasional charity run, and I hoped that Service Club would help me broaden my narrow horizons. Despite my initial excitement, I was disappointed by my first meeting: barely ten people were there, and the club was permeated by a sense of vague apathy. Nevertheless, despite the club’s desultory condition, I didn’t miss a meeting for the rest of that year, convinced that new leadership would bolster our cause when we held elections at the end of the year. I had never been a candidate in an election before, and my heart was pounding as I announced my run for vice-president. I was giddy when I was elected with a …show more content…
Armed with the lessons of last year and with a new Service Club president by my side (my friend Christy, with whom I share club responsibilities in a roughly equal partnership), my senior year has seen a complete Service Club transformation. Club membership has rocketed to thirty plus committed members, and we have started no fewer than six successful projects this semester alone, including our drive for donations to create gift baskets for a local battered women’s shelter, a new recycling program in partnership with Environmental Club, and a program where students sew mittens for a local nonprofit serving the homeless. Of all our new programs, my personal favorite is a partnership that I orchestrated between Service Club and Larimer Humane Society, a wonderful animal-rescue organization where I’ve been a volunteer for years. Compared to what it was when I joined, Service Club is an utterly new group, with a vitality and a forward momentum that members a few years ago would scarcely have