SULLIVAN COUNTY, Ind. (WTWO/WAWV) — In the aftermath of the tornado, many schools in the area are showing their support for their community by volunteering, setting up donations, and more.
Several schools in the community have begun to collaborate to make donation stations for things like water, non-perishable food items, hygiene products, and other things that would benefit those most impacted by the storm.
“We’re just trying to do what we can to support the community. We also have been allowing in-service dates for our high school students to be able to go out and volunteer in the community during the school day. At the high school, we’re trying to encourage our kids to do service work this week as much as they can and help the community,” said Cody Chapman, Sullivan High School principal. “We have a lot of our own high school kids jumping out in the community and helping their friends that have been affected, which has been good. We want to thank everybody for a lot of the community support we’ve got and because we couldn’t have done school or done anything this week without it,” he added.
Other schools that have been impacted by the tornado are working to support multiple people through community fundraisers. South Knox Middle/High School Principal, David Couchenour, described the way South Knox students are working to help the community.
“Here at school our National Honor Society and our National Junior Honor Society are collecting bottled water, and the FCA is collecting nonperishable items. We’ve had our girl’s basketball program ask if they could do a car wash this weekend, and then maybe sell some snack items next week to try to help out. So yeah, we’re jumping in, we’ve got other people that are trying to figure out a way to organize like a class or a club to go up there and just kind of jump in and volunteer their help.”
Along with specific clubs stepping up, school officials also mentioned individuals throughout the student body are simply donating money directly to funds and have been wearing purple and gold, Sullivan High School’s colors, as a display of support and solidarity.
“They’re our neighbors, and we all try to take care of each other back and forth. We’re just going to donate money that we’ve been collecting from our kids and the staff. They’ve been very generous. These people are their friends, these are their neighbors, these are their relatives. It’s just a tragedy,” said Nancy Liston, principal of North Central High School.
