Park 1

Yenah Park

Jackie Burr, Instructor

English 2010

28 May 2021

The Homeless Helpers

January of 2019. Imagine a fifteen year old sophomore during Mustang Academic Period

(MAP) blindly wandering through the business hall for the first time since sophomore

orientation. I had no idea what I was doing, but I had made a promise to my older sister to seek

out Randall C Kammerman. After shuffling by several classrooms and finally finding the correct

one, I timidly walked inside and waited.

“Hello Ms. Park, what can I do for you?”

“I want to join DECA.”

Little did my sophomore self know that those five words would absolutely transform my

life. I was immediately handed papers and packets of tips and tricks to presenting well, how to

impress judges, and vocabulary sheets of business terms I had never even heard of before. I

immediately wondered if this was a smart choice I was making, but I reluctantly chose to sign up

for the last competition before state. I was insanely nervous as I went in to compete for the first

time, butterflies erupting in my stomach and my brain wondering why I had chosen to do this.

However, I was miraculously able to pull off a third place win! With newfound confidence and

motivation in myself, I signed up for the state competition where I met so many new people and

learned so much. After placing fourth in my category, with only the top three moving to

nationals, Kammerman graciously took a chance on a dumb sophomore and placed me on a

project so that I would have the opportunitiy to experience ICDC (nationals) in Orlando, Florida.
 Park 2

It was then that I met Fernanda Caceres, someone who has absolutely changed my life. In

between our competition slots at ICDC, our group traveled to Disney World and Universal

Studios where the then DECA President told me I should apply to be an officer. I was

dumbstruck. It was my third time competing and I still had no clue how DECA worked. But by

some miracle, they convinced me to apply, and I was chosen to be Herriman’s VP of Hospitality

and Marketing.

I can confidently say that being in this position for the past two years has been one of the

most magnifying and rewarding positions of my life. This year, I wanted to organize a service

project for my school and the community. After participating in several service opportunities

with our district’s Principal’s Pantry, it came to my attention that our school had a decent number

of students who were homeless. My fellow peers and friends whose circumstances I had no idea

about. Inspired by this and wanting to help, our advisors and team decided that we wanted to

start a coat drive. Collecting any and every coat we could, regardless of size or designs. Our

advisors had previously worked with the organization Family Promise, and we worked to team

up with them once more. Our original intention of collecting a few coats to give to the Road

Home took off in a way that we were not anticipating.

We needed to properly get the word out. There was the process of designing new posters

and fliers that we hung in all areas throughout the school. We made the slogan “No Cold Kids,”

and promoted this everywhere. Announcements are spoken every morning over the school

intercom where we encouraged students to bring in any sized coats over our fundraiser’s

timeline. We also reached out to all of our local social media pages to reach a larger demographic

of people. This included Herriman’s community Facebook page as well as the Herriman City and

our high school’s Instagram pages. By taking these steps, we were able to reach several more
 Park 3

people then we would’ve without. Then the donations started coming in … and they didn’t stop.

With our project growing so rapidly, we were interviewed by different news stations; this

includes stations of KSL, Deseret News, as well as the Jordan School District Board. They

conducted interviews of some of our team members to learn more about this project. It was very

interesting to see how it was all falling into place. Seeing the support that we had for our coat

drive helped us realize that what we were doing didn’t have to stop at just our school. We had the

chance of making a difference everywhere in the district. And that’s what we were going to do.

Once we saw the potential of this project, we knew we needed some sort of incentive or

motivator for people to bring in more coats. We reached out to businesses and were able to create

a collaboration with the nearby Scheels sporting goods company in Sandy, Utah. Having a

partnership with such a large corporation was a very significant part of our project. Scheels

agreed to donate $25 gift cards for each person that brought in a coat in new or gently used

shape. In the end they ended up donating thousands of dollars in gift cards! Our fundraiser went

on for around a month and a half, with us raising 1,100 coats for the Family Promise

Organization. As a group we sorted all the coats and hauled several truckloads of them over to

our district warehouse to be distributed. I was able to then take these to the distribution locations

and see the people I was helping.

Being able to see the difference you make firsthand is the most rewarding thing you can

experience. To think that I was experiencing oblivion to my peers' circumstances makes me more

motivated to find ways to help others. It’s heartbreaking to think that several students at

Herriman don’t know about this either. However, I was in shock and awe at how willing people

were to give back to a community of people that needed them. It goes to show that when there is

a need, people will always rise up to meet and exceed expectations. While it is important for us
 Park 4

to be thankful for the circumstances we have been given, it is also important to seek

opportunities to serve. Being able to look outside of yourself and finding ways of helping others

will raise our community for us and future generations to come.