NEWS

High school students help out on MDDAY

Teresa Douglass
tdouglass@visaliatimesdelta.com
MDDAY

Make A Difference Day is Saturday and Visalia high school students are getting involved.

From Central Valley Christian, 30 boys from the football teams will volunteer with Sequoia Riverlands Trust at Kaweah Oaks Preserve. They will be moving brush and widening a trail for children as well as making picnic benches for outdoor classrooms.

Coach Mason Hughes said helping others is a good idea for football players.

"The whole premise of our job as citizens is to serve others," he said. "These high school kids need to know that serving others is what life is all about, so when they get older and raise kids they train them to do the same."

They will make a difference, he said.

At Golden West High School, students have collected 5,000 buttons for Congregation Beit Shalom's Holocaust Memorial, said Deborah Barnes, an English teacher. This Visalia synagogue is collecting 6 million buttons to represent the number of Jews who were killed by Nazis during World War II.

Even though the Holocaust is not an official part of the English curriculum, her students got a history lesson, Barnes said.

The freshmen English students collected the most buttons. One student, Liliana Ortiz, brought in more than 1,200 buttons.

Volunteer online

To volunteer on Make A Difference Day, go to www.makeadifferenceday.com and type in your ZIP code.

Be sure to register your Make A Difference Day projects at www.makeadifferenceday.com.

Contact reporter Teresa Douglass at 735-3289 or Inspire@visaliatimesdelta.com to learn more about Make A Difference Day projects in Tulare County.

— Teresa Douglass