In elementary school, a group of friends in Montgomery County, Maryland, decided they wanted to volunteer to help kids with childhood cancer.
Now, they’re seniors in high school and they’ve recruited a large group across many schools.
“I just think that like volunteering gives so much growth,” said 17-year-old Grace Xiao, a senior at Holton-Arms School in Bethesda.
Xiao said it started years ago, when the group was in fifth grade; the kids got together to help with a gift drive for the Super Joey Foundation. The foundation provides free gifts for children to pass the time in the hospital.
“We actually ended up getting a ton of donations,” Xiao said. “They put these cardboard boxes at the library, and they actually ended up being kind of like overflowing by the end of the week.”
Then they asked what they could do next.
“We were like, ‘What can we do to help besides just this gift drive that we’ve just done?’ And they were like, ‘Well, you can come and serve dinner,'” Xiao said.
So they gave it a try and got hooked.
“It was us, and maybe two of our parents in the kitchen, kind of like making some food we had, I think, pasta and like pizza, just like all the main courses, and we ended up serving it,” Xiao said. “We found it was honestly incredible to see all of those people, face to face, and they were all so, so positive.”
She said the beginning group of friends that have been volunteering since fifth grade includes Ethan Liu, 17, a senior at Montgomery Blair High School, and Kelly Wang, 17, a rising senior at Winston Churchill High School.
Now, the group of friends has grown to more than 60 student volunteers across 14 Montgomery County schools. They volunteer monthly at Ronald McDonald House of Maryland in Baltimore by making and delivering meals to the families staying there.
They now make it an event and go monthly, and there’s even a wait list. They also use their talents and sing and perform for the people there to give them a break in their day.
“It’s crazy to me that I have so many volunteers working toward the same cause, but I’m really proud of how we’ve grown, and I think that the Ronald McDonald, it’s just like a very unique event in the way it draws people in,” she said.
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