As I am sure everyone is a little tired of hearing from the announcements, emails, signs, and huge poster in the eli gallery, YEH (Youth Ending Hunger) held our annual spaghetti dinner last night. After a two year hiatus due to covid, we were finally able to bring back this longstanding tradition and I am happy to report it was a resounding success! I never thought that so many people would drag themselves out of their houses on a cold Tuesday night to eat (let’s face it) school cafeteria food. But it seems our relentless advertising paid off, and people have a little more goodness in them than I thought, because we were able to make a total of about 1200 dollars including donations, which, excluding the money we paid for food, came out to be a profit of about 700 dollars!

I was so impressed and touched by the amount of volunteers and community members that showed up to help out. About 30 middle schoolers from the jazz band came with their families to play, and very talented members of the high school chamber orchestra volunteered as well. The Shaker Heights rotary club was there, and Dr. Glasner, along with so many of my classmates and teachers. The energy in the cafeteria was so positive and happily chaotic as community members enjoyed food, musicians played, and students rushed around serving food. It felt almost like magic to see everyone come together for a good cause, and to know that efforts will go directly towards helping people, although we are still voting on which organization to donate the proceeds to. Everyone in our club worked so hard to make the dinner a success, especially the other officers and our club advisors, and it was so gratifying to see everything pay off.

This event means a lot to me personally because it was one of the first YEH events that I volunteered at as a timid freshman who was new to Shaker and trying to get involved. Three years later as a senior and officer of the club, it feels very bittersweet and full circle to be hosting the same event for the second and last time when so much has changed.

I know this dinner will be a tradition for a long time to come, and hopefully I will be home for winter break in time next year to attend as an alumn.