Service Clubs are a great way to be involved in the community and also helps with social skills. There are many service clubs in the school, including Key Club and S2S. There are also other volunteer groups that are not affiliated with the school, such as Youth Assisting Youth and Community Partnership.

“Our goal is to help our community,” Officer of Youth Assisting Youth, Ashanti Owusu-Brafi said, “We do that through tutoring students and kids throughout schools and different things. We also try to raise money for ourselves and other causes. In the past, we’ve also volunteered for the Wednesday Backpack program. We try to get people to do that every week. We also do street clean up over on Lion’s Club. We also helped out at the Camp Capable which is something the Community Partnership does. It’s a three day camp and that’s a really fun experience.”

Youth Assisting Youth is not the only service club that helps out the community. Key Club volunteers time and energy for the community as well.

“The students will work to either raise money through different fundraising projects. We’ve done selling donuts before, we’ve done UNICEF before where the kids ‘trick-or-treat’, but they don’t trick-or-treat for candy, they trick-or-treat for change. That money gets turned back into UNICEF. We also do a coat drive in November and December where we collect coats throughout the community and the different schools. Then, we turn around and we take those coats and try to give them back to kids within the school system that don’t have coats. If we have an excess amount of coats then we take them to the local coat closet where they can get them when necessary,” Sponsor of Key Club, Christy Green said.
Service Clubs are an amazing use of time and energy.

“Giving back to the community is something that everyone should be involved in and be a proper citizen. In my opinion, every person deserves the chance to succeed. Every person deserves the chance to make the community better. In all honesty, if everyone can give back and help, it makes the world a better place. I am very passionate about service because in my opinion, no person should ever be left behind, no person should be at odds against society. I think that everyone should get an equal chance to succeed and be given equal chance to have a dream in their life, and to give them a shot at their dreams. No one should be restricted just because of their social status or location, or really anything,” Co-founder and Officer of Youth Assisting Youth, Jesse Liu said.
Volunteering doesn’t just help the community, but the volunteers themselves also benefit.

“I really feel that I have learned a lot about my community through volunteering. I feel that I’ve gotten to understand how a small town like Rolla works. It’s a skill that you really need to have– to be able to communicate with people and interact with people in your community. This service club really helps with that because we are around adults and other students. College students also volunteer around us. We learn how to talk to people. We learn how to ask questions. To get us a service club, Jesse and Alex had to go talk to some of the officials in Rolla to get everything together. We also had to go to the courthouse to talk to them about our “Cleaning A Street” project. We had to organize all of this ourselves, and I really feel like in the future, all these skills that we’re learning now is helping us with our employers, our jobs, our teachers. I feel like, if I didn’t have this service club, I wouldn’t be the person that I am today. I’m confident with asking questions in class, or going to the principal with an issue at school. I will go and do something like that. I feel like this service club is one of the reasons we’ve gained so much confidence. We really are independent,” Owusu-Brafi said.

A student-led service club has given students the chance to help the community how they feel is best.

“The thing is, with leniency and independence, we really desire it, because the school organizations and clubs are great, but the problem is that they restrict you and put you into a box. Like National Honor Society will make you do this, and this club will make you do this, and that club will make you to do that. They’re great clubs, don’t get me wrong on that. I love being a part of those. They’re great clubs to be involved in. But I also really wanted something where if I wanted to do something I could just say, “I’m going to go do it,” and we could do it without any restrictions and further discussion. We could just go do it how we saw fit. And we also won’t be restricted by a single school district or a grade level. We could just really recruit anybody in the community who wanted to. If you’re home-schooled you could join. If you want to do work at St. Pat’s, you could work at Science Olympiad. It opens up endless opportunities and allows us to really just take this organization however we like it,” Liu said.

These service clubs have major goals they would like to accomplish.

“I think just as a sponsor, I want to see the membership grow and I want to see the students grow, and their attitudes towards others and towards society in general and just their community that they know that they need to not just worry about themselves, but to give back to others and to constantly be thinking about others and how they can help them,” Green said.
Youth Assisting Youth has a similar goal.
“I really want us to be known throughout Rolla. I want our name to be known something common. You know the Kiwanis of Rolla, people understand that, they know that. Or Rotary, that’s something that people know. And the Backpack Program and also the Russell House. Those are things that people know of. I want people to know Youth Assisting Youth and can see that as a well-qualified group association of kids who really know how to get stuff done in a town,” Owusu-Brafi said.

Liu echoed that sentiment.

“Probably the most major goal I have is to maybe be recognized at a city council meeting for our service. Right now we’re working on that. Of course it’s not an hour long goal but you can’t just do a certain number of hours and do really, a lot of work in your community. Like I said, it’s a long term goal, and we’ve just been working on it. To be recognized formally by the city of Rolla as an organization that would be very cool.” Liu said.

Being a part of a service club requires nothing but time and effort. Upperclassmen encourage underclassmen to be a part of these clubs.

“So we hope the underclassmen keep this going. It’s going to be harder since we won’t be here anymore, but all they have to do is volunteer, because volunteering is fun,” Owusu-Brafi said.