Freshman Students Participate in 'Adopt One Village' Community Service Project

For the second year in a row, freshman students at West Orange High School have been working together and compiling care packages to send to Ghana, Africa, through the Adopt One Village community service project.

The service project is through the Freshman Seminar classes and began with an assembly and a presentation from the founder of Adopt One Village, Emmanuel Anim-Sackey.

Community service and the moral value of selflessness are two of the many themes stressed in Freshman Seminar. Many students decorated their boxes and wrote personal letters to those receiving the items.

Over the past month, the freshman class has been collecting the most needed items in Ghana; shoes, clothes, books, toys, school supplies and bikes. 

The Freshman Seminar classes competed to determine which team can bring in the most products to transport to Ghana. On Jan. 16, after school, all classes brought their items to the Tarnoff cafeteria for judging of the competition. 

Student “captains” described to judges, Assistant Principals Lesley Chung and Annette Towson, what type of impact their donations will have on those in Ghana and how this experience has changed their outlook on helping those that are less fortunate.

Anim-Sackey was thrilled with the amount of items collected and the energetic participation of students at West Orange. Ms. Chung and Ms. Towson were also impressed by the dedication of both students and teachers. The freshman class did an excellent job representing West Orange High School.