Before school on Tuesday, September 17th, members of City High’s new SWRAS club gathered around a quiet table in the library, listening intently to the club’s founder and president Haileigh Steffen ‘22 as she excitedly began the first meeting of the year.

Students for World Relief Action Society is a new club at City High this year. The purpose of the club is to participate in projects to raise money and resources for children in need in third-world countries. Members will receive Silver Cord hours for the time they put into projects and administrative positions in the club. 

The club’s main project for this year is teaming up with the Rebuilding Nepal foundation to raise money and school supplies for children in Nepal.

“Last year, the Rebuilding Nepal foundation was having a Lego Drive. I thought that was really interesting, so I learned more about it,” Steffen recalled. “I realized that there is a lot more that the students of City High could do, not just college students or adults.”

SWRAS welcomes anyone who is interested to join. Member Ana Laura Leyser ‘22 is looking forward to being a part of the club this year.

“I wanted to join SWRAS because of the whole idea of helping all these kids who are really far away. It just seemed like a good thing to do for me as a teenager,” Leyser said. “I’m excited to do fun projects to raise a lot of money and get a lot of donations for those kids.”

Steffen described how SWRAS has plans to have competitions within the club to see how many donations they can raise and to make it more exciting. They have also talked about teaming up with other clubs such as Culinary Club to jointly organize things like bake sales, as well as selling cards made by the children in Nepal.

Leyser explained that the idea is for the club to have a very laid-back atmosphere. There will be no required commitment to participate. Instead, members are welcome to come as often as they would like and can participate in whichever projects they choose. 

“Sometimes clubs can be really stressful if they give you a bunch of stuff to do, and you still have school and everything else,” Leyser said. “[SWRAS] is a lot more relaxed and you can do however much you want to contribute.”

Unlike many of the clubs at City High, SWRAS is being organized entirely by students and will be completely student-driven. 

“When students can create their own projects, I think it has a deeper meaning for them,” Steffen explained. “It encourages them to do more projects like this in the future.”

SWRAS is introducing a new kind of club environment for City High, with high hopes for the upcoming school year. It will meet on Tuesdays at 8:00 a.m. in the library until a firm location is set.

“I’m hoping that we can establish ourselves as a community of good people who want to do something more outside of their school and outside of their country,” Steffen said. “Really what we want is to give students an opportunity to create projects of their own and see that their ideas can have an impact on others around the world.