North Hill Supplies

Reducing the stress of finding needed school supplies

Background Information

Anna Unke, a junior in Hudson High School, has grown up in reasonably privileged communities, where the ability to afford basic school supplies was never a consideration or problem. Through service activities, she has grown aware that this is a problem in the North Hill community in Akron, a mere twenty minutes away from her town of Hudson. There are students in the schools who simply cannot afford basic school supplies. Which to her, feels extremely intense and significant. Additionally, North High School consists of a large and diverse number of new immigrants, who have a limited support network of family and friends to draw upon. (13% of North High School students have experienced homelessness.) Anna wants to take one thing off their plate, and not have them worry about school supplies like she didn’t have to. It’s one less obstacle they face to achieve their academic aspirations. Anna’s goal is to provide 50 to 100 backpacks fully stocked with school supplies for the upcoming academic year. Her plan is to seek donations from her high school/middle school, businesses, and her community.

Implementation of Project

The start of Anna’s project wasn’t always perfect. Whether that was communicating her project with her school district or trying to get donations brought in in the first place, getting her community’s attention was hard. Some other struggles she encountered were having to shift the original plan to make the project attainable and finding time to work on her project during her Junior year. Through lots of emails, meetings, interviews, and time well spent, Anna put up posters all around her High School and Middle school. She made a promo video to go on the morning announcements in the schools as well. Further advocating her project, she chose to make her open ended AP Language final speech on the educational struggles at North High School and how to help, promoting donating to her service project.

Beyond the physical and technical work of doing things like setting up donation bins, an online donation database and working on processing donations; she wanted to personally spend time with students at North High school in Akron. This way she would get to know a lot more and understand the environment better. She also used and quoted a lot of what the students she talked with said. This way Anna spread the voice of students actually in North High School. Anna’s action team was also incredibly helpful. They volunteered their time helping her spread information and get in direct contact with the North High school donation organization.

Results of Project

As of May 20th 2024, Anna had collected about 10 backpack donations, 100+ pencils, 70 binders/folders, 11 tape rolls, 10+ erasers, 10 Expo markers, 4 calculators, 2 computer mouse, and other miscellaneous valuable school supplies. In addition to physical donations, she has raised about $400 dollars for her to go out and buy even more school supplies and backpacks for students.  She dedicated roughly 45 hours on her project so far and still has more work to do.  The project is not over yet. She is still bringing in donations and working to reach her goal of 50 to 100 backpack bundles donated. Many people helped contribute to her project like her school’s staff, students and individuals who’ve donated, but most directly, her parents and friend Kris Stoehr. Anna believes that she will at least reach her goal of 50 backpack bundles donated by mid summer of 2024, as she is noticing things coming together rapidly.

What’s Next

Anna plans to continue using her leadership through the different school clubs she is a part of.  Anna is a part of many of her school’s clubs including Hudson Community First (a club that offers many service activities in her town), Our Time to Shine (a program to put on a musical with the special needs students), Zonta-Club (advocating for women’s rights), Huddle (a club where members are mentor/teachers to elementary and middle schoolers), Drug Free Club of America, French Club, and Italian Club. She is already a part of all these clubs for her senior year, and is now on the leadership board for Z-club where she hopes to initiate a drive for feminine products to women in poverty. She is also now President of Our Time to Shine and is planning to bring in more volunteers and attention to their shows. This summer Anna is attending a month long backpacking and sea kayaking expedition course through the National Outdoor Leadership School (NOLS) where she is excited to use her leadership skills in the backcountry environment whether that’s being leader of the day (LOD) or solving problems in the environment and with her group! After high school she is planning to attend college, and after, she would love to use her leadership skills as becoming a CEA at Alzar!