Young Impact Club is a new club that s
tarted this year by two juniors, Kinlee Kropp and Lex Brown. They started Young Impact with one big goal in mind: to create a club that not only talks about the issues affecting the community, but mainly focuses on the issues affecting the school specifically. Not only that, but they also have a lot of emphasis on addressing these issues, not just discussing them. They meet at 7:45 a.m. every other Tuesday in English teacher Andrew Smith’s room.
Young Impact Club is not like an average high school activism club. Unlike the other clubs at the school, Young Impact strives to make a difference in the school community. In the first two meetings, they discussed what issues were going on in the school and what they could do to help these issues.
“We saw other clubs saying, ‘Hey, we should get stuff done,'” Kropp said. “So we were like, ‘Okay, let’s create a club where the whole idea is that we get stuff done.'”
The club was originally thought up when Kropp and Brown were looking for an activism club, but could not find one of the already active clubs that fit the idea they had in their minds. They decided soon thereafter to create their own club, one where they could mold it into exactly what they wanted from a club.
Brown explained that Kropp had originally come up with the idea to start the club, and she was 100% the one who drove the idea from the get-go.
The club’s first act is already in the process of being brought to life. They plan to open up a thrift shop at the school near the cafeteria, where students can donate any unused clothes for other people to go and buy at a discounted price. The club plans to donate all the money back into the community in some way.
“It will be opened by the cafeteria, it’s going to be super super affordable, everything is going to be less than $10, so we’re hoping to get that up and running here soon,” Brown said.
Their first two meetings have gone swimmingly. The first did a great job at establishing what the club is and helped gain a footing with some of their members. The second was much m
ore planning-oriented, focusing on their thrift shop idea and how they planned to get that done correctly.
“The club meetings have been great,” Smith said. Apart from the plans coming to life quickly, the meetings have been “entirely led by the students,” making it an extremely welcoming atmosphere, and making for a great place to be.
The second meeting specifically had a great turnout, but they still hope for more and more people to come over the next couple of weeks. This, paired with the ambitious upcoming plans they have, will hopefully lead to a bright future for the club.
“Even though we’re just starting, just beginning, we have a really close community right now, everyone feels like they can talk about issues that matter to them,” Kropp said.
As the Young Impact club grows with every meeting, the co-presidents are hopeful to bring meaningful change to the school community.
“I think it’s really going to grow,” Brown said. “We’re going to be able to do a larger scope of these projects. And I think the goal is really just to better the community and better ourselves.”
