The beautiful thing about having a student body as large as ERHS is the amazing diversity, talent, and kindness that we have intertwined between each person here on campus.

Until 2017, Hurricane Katrina was known as the most expensive natural disaster to hit the US, at a large $150 billion, but experts are deeming Harvey to exceed those numbers with an even larger amount not yet determined. With over a million people displaced and their rescues still happening after two week of the storm, many people have taken fundraising into their own hands. One of these people is Eleanor Roosevelt student, Alyssa Martinez, who has raised over a thousand dollars (still counting) to donate to the disastrous storm recovery efforts.

I asked Alyssa to speak on a few things.

First, can you say a little about what it is you’ve done?

Alyssa: We have been hosting a fundraiser where we’ve been selling ice pops for a dollar. 100% of the proceeds will be going straight to the victims of Hurricane Harvey-we’re actually sending the money through a company that will double whatever money we come up with. So we’ll actually be donating twice as much.

Can you tell us what inspired you to come up with such an idea?

Is it something you came up with all on your own?

A: Yeah, I came up with the idea after watching the news and seeing all these little kids selling lemonade and having bake sales so I thought why not do that at a high school? I had a feeling we could make a lot of money for this. So from there I just asked teachers and friends to help me out in getting this to be an actual thing.

Did you face any challenges?

A: The only challenges we had was having other clubs and groups selling the same things. One time after school there was a group giving otter pops out for free so that brought our sales down a lot.

Would you ever consider doing anything like this again?

A: Actually next week we’re having another fundraiser for Hurricane Irma, although we’re hoping to get some help from other clubs maybe, we need the volunteers.

Is there anyone you’d like to shout out?

A: I want to thank Serena Alvarez for being my co-advisor, she was very helpful in all last minute details, Jaime Arellano for helping when some of the volunteers didn’t show up at lunch, and he was never signed up as a volunteer but he did; Lily Cortez, Amarie Castillo, and Jaida Wheeler for just helping out a bunch at all the booths, and lastly Ms Isett for being my advisor, she really helped a lot throughout this whole thing, she’s the main reason we were able to do this in the first place.

Photo by me