HOWARD – After all the trials and tribulations of 2020, Wess McKown presented a challenge to the seven students in his Current Events class at East Knox Local School District: Make a difference.
“Make a difference in someone’s life,” he told the students, who range from freshmen to seniors. “Just make a difference.”
There has been, after all, very little good news in the 2020 current events headlines for the students to study.
“That gets very tiring for adults, yet alone young children,” McKown said. “The students were going to burn out on the election and COVID if we kept doing current events that way.”
The students considered several ideas, including helping victims of wildfires in California. Finally they decided on a local project: a Christmas toy drive for foster children.
It started with House of New Hope, a foster home agency in Licking County, that posted a message on its sign saying that it needed toys for the children in foster care.
“I put it on the kids to do everything,” McKown said. “So the kids called House of New Hope, who said they had 107 kids currently in foster care from newborn to 17 years old, all in need of toys.”
The students then expanded to Village Network in Knox County, another foster care agency.
“The students made all the phone calls and organized everything,” McKown said. “They created the flier that is on our Facebook Page.”
The entire school is donating toys. The home room with the most toy donations will be treated to a full breakfast, second place to doughnuts. Several churches and businesses have donated toys as well.
“It became an all-out community toy drive,” McKown said. “East Knox is a small community. We’re little but we’re mighty.”
So far, the drive has generated new toys worth more than $7,000. Principal Alan Keesee’s office is overflowing with toys waiting to be picked up.
“We are going to have hundreds and hundreds of happy kids in Knox and Licking counties who are in the foster care programs,” the teacher said.
The community support has been humbling, McKown noted.
“This year of all years, the year of craziness, it’s nice to see that people are still people,” he said.
He hopes the toy drive will become an annual event.
“Ideally, maybe we can have happy kids again next year with the same amount of toys we got this year,” McKown said.
