This month, Meghan Falkenstein, a sophomore at Upper Saint Clair High School, set up a clothing donation collection box in the front office for anyone who had old clothes that they weren’t using. Although the cardboard box may not have seemed so glamorous, her efforts, which were in conjunction with the Keep Yinz Warm foundation, were. The clothing drive was for her MYP personal project, and, needless to say, it was an admirable project.

Meghan was actually introduced to the Keep Yinz Warm foundation by her mom. Keep Yinz Warm is a Pittsburgh-area foundation with the goal of providing clothing to Pittsburgh’s homeless.

She said, “My mom, she works with someone, and her son actually has the foundation, so she told me about it.”

The planning process for sophomore’s MYP projects started at the beginning of the school year. The actual clothing drive ran through most of January, and all the clothes were shipped out the door to the streets of Pittsburgh by February. All of the clothes that were collected were sent to Keep Yinz Warm, and were distributed from there to Pittsburgh’s homeless. There’s a lot more information on Keep Yinz Warm on their website, if you’re interested or want to get involved at www.keepyinzwarm.com.

Once she had the idea worked out, she began to get the word out. Meghan talked about how she spread the word about the clothing drive: “There was a box in the office, and an E-Blast was sent out, and there was a ton of clothes that people delivered, stuff from my family and me, too.”

The president of the Parent-Teacher-Student Organization (PTSO) also sent out an email to alert people of Meghan’s project, and that was a key force in getting the donations rolling in. Several teachers in the high school also offered up their old clothing once they heard about the event.

Every MYP personal project is done with an assigned MYP supervisor, and Meghan’s advisor was Señora Darakos, a Spanish teacher at the high school. She helped out Meghan out in organizing the process, getting the word out, soliciting some donations herself, and helped to orchestrate the PTSO email. She explained that she and Meghan had strategically scheduled the event in January so that the clothes got out to the homeless around Pittsburgh just as they enter right into the heart of the winter. As a matter of fact, the due date for the MYP projects isn’t for a few months. She sent out an email to other teachers that was instrumental in getting some donations through the door.

Both Meghan and Señora Darakos were pretty happy with the amount of clothes that they came out with.

Señora Darakos said, “The clothing was piled up high in the big box, and then there were several more boxes in front of the office.”

Recently, the “big box,” which was sitting in the office at probably about three feet high, was stacked to the brim with clothes, definitely an encouraging sign for Meghan’s efforts.