A southwest suburban high school teamed up last month with a nonprofit organization to help people who are down and out.
Students and staff from Shepard High School in Palos Heights and Almost Home Chicago put together holiday baskets throughout December.
The effort, called 31 Days of Giving, was the brainchild of Mel Tillman, a Shepard graduate who is president of Almost Home Chicago in Oak Lawn, which helps people who are homeless and those suffering from addiction.
She asked participants to collect what clients had said they needed and package them in a laundry baskets big enough to hold plenty of the essentials. Items requested included aluminum foil, paper towels, garbage bags, food storage containers, laundry soap, hand soap, shampoo and packaged food, such as boxes of cereal, crackers, instant potatoes and noodles.
“It would keep food in people’s pantries during the super cold months,” said Tillman, who with other Almost Home staff drives around on the coldest days to take some of their homeless clients to hotels. “We made our lists specifically off what is needed.”
Erin Quinlan, Family & Consumer Sciences teacher and National Honor Society sponsor at Shepard, was already looking for ways to help out the less fortunate late last year when she heard about Almost Home’s soup kitchen. She arranged for her NHS students to help out with that.
Then she stumbled on Tillman’s Facebook post about the holiday gig and thought, “This is something we can do!”
“I think especially at this time, people are struggling and everyone needs help sometimes,” said Quinlan. “If we can come together to provide basic essentials to people, why wouldn’t we?
“Both kids and teachers were excited to help and having something they can check off and know that it will be used, needed and appreciated make all the difference.”
The school’s Leo Club joined the effort, and the two clubs bought all the laundry baskets and recruited groups of students and staff to volunteer.
Leo Club sponsor Camille Tunstall wanted to take the project one step further and invite principals, security and cafeteria workers — nearly everyone in the Shepard community.
“I took it to the next level and tried to bring some unity and community love into it,” said Tunstall, who also is a teacher’s assistant in the Family & Consumer Sciences program.
Tunstall said they also identified Shepard families in need and reserved 9 baskets for them. She, Quinlan and teacher Debbie Shannon, delivered the remaining 25 to Almost Home Jan. 7.
“I come from a very strong community service background,” said Tunstall, who was a Girl Scout and then Girl Scout leader for years. “Leo Club is definitely community-service oriented.”
Tunstall said she was already thinking about the Easter baskets Leo Club members could put together for Community High School District 218’s preschool classes and plans to do a Zoom call/party for club members.
Almost Home’s Tillman said one perk was interacting with Shepard staff and students. When she was a struggling teen, Shepard staff had helped her.
“They took a very active role in my life and making sure I was successful,” Tillman said.
She was in the school’s President’s Club, where she learned leadership skills.
“So in a sense, that’s really where I started prepping for where I am now,” she said.
Janice Neumann is a freelance reporter for the Daily Southtown.
