On September 8th, 2022, GTVA President Ally Negulescu (8 hrs) volunteered at Tahquitz High School shelter and managed to film a commercial that blew up on social media!
2 days after previously donating boxes of clothes, Ally decided that she wanted to go back to help. With this in mind, she quickly assembled announced a possibility of volunteering to all of her friends from school and drove over to Tahquitz High School. When she arrived, she also brought an additional bag of clean clothes to donate.
After a few minutes of talking to the Red Cross officials and District Professionals, Ally went out to the front of the school and filmed a quick video. In the video, she invited people who were willing to help donate items to come over to the school to drop them off. She mentioned a need for any clean clothes, kids clothes, and especially new socks, since there were kids that were running around barefoot. The video got the attention of tons of people, including many of her classmates, her school’s ASB (leadership) team, local families from Hemet, and even the Hemet mayor, whom Ally had a quick conversation with. Because of the video blowing up amongst people in Hemet, many different people came in to donate all throughout the day, to the point where too many donations came in and Salvation Army had to be called to pick some stuff up. Oops.
Other than that, over 10 different people had also called Ally asking if they could volunteer. Due to the limited amount of volunteering spots, only 3 of Ally’s classmates were able to come, but people still came in to donate. Different tasks were also carried out through the day, including serving food, helping people check in, running around seeing if anyone needed anything, and babysitting children. Ally was also pulled outside during volunteering and interviewed by CNBC who inquired about the video she posted as well as volunteering, which was pretty cool.
At the end of the day, GTVA is grateful for all the hard work Tahquitz High School, Red Cross, and all the other volunteers put in, and can’t wait to help in the future if needed. Until then, stay tuned for more news on the fire!
