Connect: Adopt-a-Family

The students in Ms. De Hart’s senior connect class are working quickly, much like Santa’s elves, to make a difference in the life of a seventeen year old, Andrea, and her six month old son, Jeremiah, who live together in Oakland.

“We’re working with Brighter Beginnings in Oakland, an adopt-a-family program people in need can go on and solicit help from,” Kelsey Karawanny began. “The people are put in a database, and we then looked through the profiles, in search of someone we could relate to and help.”

For the holidays, Connect is fundraising to purchase gifts and wrap them for Andrea, gifts that Andrea specifically requested—necessity items like diapers, coats, food, shampoo, and wipes. The students went around to advisories to collect donations, and also made posters and held a bake sale and pizza day to raise money. Andrea has lived through homelessness, sexual trauma, a teen pregnancy, has a learning disability, and has parents who have substance abuse issues, all related to low-income families in under-supported areas.

”We’ve been working for a month now, first deciding on the project we were going to focus on, and then we looked to find a family. After we had covered the basics, we started fundraising,” Jacey Kurtz and Kelsey Karawanny said.

Ashlee Wakefield added, “Ms. De Hart suggested the project. Since we are in Connect Academy, community is our key focus. We chose to adopt Andrea and her son because she is a teenager like we are, has a baby, and has had many hardships in her life. We felt for her. Other people wrote down on their necessity lists that they wanted ipods and other non-essentials down. She is in genuine need for the basics.”

“If we denied the fact that people are struggling in today’s world, we’d just become an accomplice to it. Someone has to break the cycle of being selfish,” Shakeel Bhatia concluded, adding that he has witnessed the struggle of a teen parent first-hand, in his own life.

Everyone seems to have taken a genuine interest in the project, focusing on counting donations, baking goods for the bake sale, researching Andrea’s case, and going out to purchase the things she needs most. To donate to Connect’s cause, talk with Ms. De Hart before December 16th.