PCHS Bulletin – Vimianchan Thach
Published Date – Aug 28, 2025
Over the summer, the PCHS Key Club organized a school supply drive to aid schools and students in need. With a successful turnout, the PCHS Key Club was able to provide Virgil Mills Elementary School with a multitude of supplies for teachers and students!
This project started at the end of the 2024-2025 school year with President Aiden Patterson suggesting an outreach plan for over the summer. From there, the officer group and advisor Jennifer Akers began discussing possible projects to conduct. What was decided was for a school supply drive to help out Virgil Mills.
During the summer, the officers decided to meet to finally begin the drive and discussed what places to contact for permission to have a box to collect supplies and what set date should boxes to be picked up to bring to Virgil Mills. Virgil Mills itself; Bayside Community Church, North River Campus, and Rocky Bluff Public Library had allowed for donations to be dropped off with the final day of donations being August 8.
This school supply drive was not mandatory or forced upon the key club; instead, the key club did it because they wanted to make a “direct impact to those in our local community,” according to Patterson.
“By supplying kids with the proper materials needed for the school year, we are possibly setting that student up for success for that school year, who otherwise may have been neglected the necessary materials,” he added.
Although it seemed easy to start up this project, it was incredibly challenging organizing it.
“Identifying if there was a need, finding locations, advertising, making it appealing, it was all difficult to organize,” Patterson said.
If Patterson had a chance to do something differently for the supply drive to make it more efficient and less challenging, he would contact the PTO of Virgil Mills first, to find what supplies were needed, and got to local businesses to either ask for possible donations or if they were able to host a drop off site.
With the hard work of the officers Patterson, Vice President Maya Uralil, Secretary Vimianchan Thach (myself), Treasurer Anusha Uralil, and Webmaster Braelyn Fletcher, the supply drive had a huge turnout and was able to provide Virgil Mills with a ton of supplies to last the year!
Patterson gave his sincere thoughts about the turnout, stating that it was much greater than originally anticipated with an overflowing amount of donations being the result. Out of the three drop-offs places, Bayside Community Church’s North River Campus had the best turnout, most likely due to the large following that the church consists of.
This school supply drive is going to be able to help both the students and teachers alike. With this sentiment, the PCHS Key Club and Virgil Mills hope to be able to do this great project once again next summer!