From January to February, KEY Club collected feminine hygiene products for the Her Drive. 

Her Drive is a Chicago non-profit organization that launched in June 2020. It provides valuable items for females, essentials such as bras, tampons, individually wrapped pads, and hair products. 

According to the Her Drive, around 21,212 new and gently used bras, 417,302 menstrual care products and 164,334 general hygiene products have been donated. 

“We’re collecting menstrual care, feminine hygiene, clothing, anything a woman could use. We’re collecting all of that and those will go to marginalized women,” said Christina Morcus ‘22. “I had our philanthropy board help me take care of the paperwork, and then I had a Zoom meeting with the organization.”

Morcus said that the club did not receive many donations for the HER Drive.

“I think it was like 120, but they were individual pads, so that is really not a lot,” said Morcus. 

She mentioned that next time she plans to advertise it differently. Her idea is to have bigger posters and try to expand people’s knowledge about the Her Drive by spreading the word on the school’s website or the school’s social media.

Natalie Vasquez ‘22, the vice president, assists Morcus to run the meetings, organize events and attend the events such as FIND Food Bank. 

FIND Food Bank is a food bank that serves eastern Riverside and southern San Bernardino by distributing food to the community and working to promote dignity and serve healthy nutritious food.

“It’s just important to help the community. That’s our purpose for KEY Club, making a difference in the community,” said Vasquez. “Since we focus on helping the community, we decided to center around girls because there is a certain stigma on having drives made for girls, so we just decided to help the girls out because we do makeup half of the population of the world.” 

KEY Club meetings are held once a month on Tuesdays in Susan Finch’s classroom. The meetings are held during lunchtime to discuss what their plans of action are for the local area.

KEY Club is an organization that is sponsored by Kiwanis International. Members in KEY Club provide their acts of service by cleaning up parks, collecting clothing and gathering food drives. Throughout their acts and services, they also learn skills that can be used later in life such as leadership, caring and inclusiveness. 

Finch, the adviser, facilitates the students’ needs and is a hands-off adviser. Her tasks include filing paperwork and giving feedback to students about their ideas.

“It’s a service organization, so giving service is one of the best things we can do to help our community to figure out who we are and what we can do,” Finch said.