Junior co-president of Achieving Change Together Yonah Davis said he thought by involving companies like Muddy Paws Cheesecake and Ben and Jerry’s, he could inspire students to donate winter gear for STEP.

“We just wanted to motivate students to bring in winter gear and help the community and we though prizes would be a great way to involve local businesses and motivate students,” Davis said.

Achieving Change Together (ACT) club adviser Jenny Magdal said Davis along with co-president Yonit Krebs take on the majority of responsibility concerning organizing volunteer opportunities.

“They take care of everything and then just check in with me occasionally to give me updates, and that’s really all it’s been so far,” Magdal said.

Davis said getting in contact with companies to work with ACT was overall a simple process and thinks reaching out to businesses serves as a valuable life lesson.

“Some of them were personal connections and others were just cold emails. We’ve worked with a few of the businesses in the past, and some of them have just been known to work with the high school,” Davis said.

Davis said letting students know about the opportunity to win prizes has been difficult to convey, but he and Krebs have taken to different mediums.

“I think that’s been one of the difficulties because we’ve done a lot of announcements over the loudspeaker, but a lot of people don’t necessarily hear that, so we’ve really tried to populate the hallways with flyers,” Davis said.

Magdal said the co-presidents noticed a need for winter gear by volunteering at STEP and decided to motivate students by offering prizes in return for donating.

“They had been volunteering at STEP and realized that there was a real need in our community for those nice warm things for winter,” Magdal said. “We need incentives because people go based off of incentives, so (Davis and Krebs) just started asking local places for who would donate and they got some awesome prizes—it’s amazing.”

According to Davis, the club already has a plan for distributing the prizes.

“What is important to know is that if your grade does win the prize you will need to show your student ID to claim the prize just to make sure it’s fair,” Davis said.