For a long time now, Severna Park has been the leading school for fundraising for The Make-A-Wish Foundation, raising up to $250,000 for the children in this program, but it wasn’t without the help of many students, teachers, and volunteers giving their time and efforts into making these kids’ dreams a reality. Severna Park is aiming to do fundraising once again this year to help more kids through this incredible program. During Wish week this year, they are helping raise money for little Aiylah to grant her wish of going to Orlando, Florida.
The Make-A-Wish program is a non-profit organization dedicated to granting the wishes of children with critical illnesses. Founded in 1980, it aims to bring hope, strength, and joy to these children and their families during challenging times. Through the generosity of donors, volunteers, and supporters, Make-A-Wish has fulfilled countless wishes, ranging from meeting celebrities to experiencing once-in-a-lifetime adventures. Each wish is personalized and tailored to the unique interests and dreams of the child, providing them with precious memories that last a lifetime.
Setting up this wish week started months prior and took a lot of effort and work from the leadership class at Severna Park. Many of the students originally joined leadership because they wanted to help out their communities just like Grace Daly who is currently taking leadership. “I wanted to join leadership because I feel like I have a lot of leadership qualities that I wanted to kind of express and show and In a variety of ways whether that’s putting on a fundraiser or just helping out in my community and it’s a really rewarding program and I highly recommend it to everyone,” Daly said.
It has been a highly beneficial class for many students and has brought a lot of joy. Jake Sobocinski has also felt this way about leadership and “liked working together with [his] classmates and meeting new people and having fun together,” Sobocinski said.
During the setup process, students have been putting together ideas for how to raise money and “during class [they] have been organizing our fundraisers and everything and giving each and every person in our class different roles and just different jobs for each of the games and over the course of the past few months, we have been executing those plans all over the school so that people know about it,” Daly said.
One of the most popular fundraising events that the leadership program set up was the lacrosse night, which was many of the students’ favorite parts about wish week, like Isabella Opleden who said her “favorite part about wish week was definitely the wish lacrosse game it was so much fun and we got to actually meet the wish kid which made it feel really personal and impactful to actually meet her and too see where our fundraising was going and just like how young she is and going through something like that just made it like really impactful and a lot more worth it for all the work we have done, it was also just really fun” Opleden said
Raising money for this cause wasn’t only from the contributions from the students, but also the community within Severna Park. Isabella Opleden stated that they had “a series of restaurant fundraiser nights which are sponsored by local stores and restaurants and then we advertised those,” Opleden said. They provided a huge outreach to our Severna Park community and allowed them to get their favorite foods while also being able to help the cause.
Other ways the leadership class raised money was when “[they] had face painting at the game and then [they had] QR codes all around for people to donate too and then [they] also [sold] the wish week shirts and those [got] sold for $10 and all the proceeds [went] to make a wish,” Opleden said.
It’s a truly inspiring program and it provides many opportunities for the students and the kids involved. Being able to give back is something that can’t be recreated anywhere else but with your actions and Daly feels the exact same way and stated that her “favorite part about helping people is just seeing the joy in all of their faces whenever we put on our events and fundraisers and stuff and just feeling like I’m contributing as a member of my community,” Daly said.
After wish week concluded Severna Park was able to raise over $19,000 to support the Make-A-Wish fund and it was all thanks to the hard work of so many students, teachers, and the community.
