By Jake Butler

Student Council’s annual holiday gift drive to benefit students at Detroit’s Joy Prep Academy kicked off November 30 with student wish lists available at all three lunches.  Gifts are due to Student Council by December 9 so that they may be delivered by December 16.

“The part I’m looking forward to the most is getting to deliver the gifts to all of the kids and watching smiles stretch so wide across their faces as they get excited about a single toy that they are receiving,” said senior Student Council member Linden Ebeling, who is in charge of this year’s gift drive.

Student Council asks that gifts be unwrapped, and that one clothing item and one gift be included; the two should total between $30 and $40. When you sign up at lunch, you will receive the child’s wish list, as well as their clothing sizes.

Gifts will be delivered to students at Joy Prep on December 16. “Going to the school and seeing the way that you’ve affected the children [is the most rewarding part about the whole project],” according to senior Student Council member Caroline McGann. Last year, the Viking student body donated enough gifts so that 247 total elementary schoolers had something to open last holiday season. This year, they’re hoping to raise even more.  

But the giving doesn’t stop after the holidays are over this December. This year, Student Council is starting a pen pal program between Joy Prep Elementary and the students at Walled Lake Central who helped to make their holiday memorable. Come springtime, Student Council is arranging for all of the kids to be bussed to Central, and letting them “hang with their pen pals,” as Ebeling put it.