As everyone knows, Halloween just recently passed, and our school’s Beta Club recently hosted a “Trunk or Treat”.

The National Beta Club is an organization for 4th through 12th grade students in the United States. Its purpose is “to promote the ideals of academic achievement, character, leadership and service among elementary and secondary school students. The Beta Club president for Winter Springs High, Kaitlyn McCue, weighed in on their plans and goals for doing the trunk or treat.

“So basically, I came up with the idea over the summer. I’ve been in beta since the 6th grade, and this is my second consecutive year as president. We have been wanting to go to the state convention to compete, so I was trying to come up with fundraiser ideas we could do, but I wanted it to be something involving the entire community, since we’re a very community centered honor society. I talked to our sponsor and she was hesitant at first because we didn’t have a lot of time to put together such a huge event, especially since it would be the first large event like that in WSHS Beta history, (they’ve only ever done things like food drives and Toys for Tots) but I figured ‘what the heck? We’re trying to compete at convention for the first time in school history so why not make this a first too?’ I’m in 9 different clubs so I figured it would be fairly easy to pull people together to help us out too. (Ultimately I got SHS to do a themed car, NHS to help with volunteers to work games and things, and photo club to help too). So I made two types of flyers, contacted a few of my clubs to get input, and then went to Mr. Gaffney and Ms. Draus for approval and once they said yes, we ran with it. Despite a few bad Facebook reviews, I think the night turned out to be a really big success. We raised almost $600 total and had at least 200 people show up! It was kind of small with only 12 trunk stops but we had around 10-12 games (including face painting, Henna tattoos, crafts, and other Halloween themed activities), silent auctions (all from donated items from places like Thirst Teas, Paccinos, Mary Kay, Scentsy, and more), concessions, and photo club even set up a photo booth for us. I’m a senior this year so I won’t have the chance to do it again, but I hope the club turns it into an annual event. Most of the feedback from it was positive and many people said they would definitely be back next year! To be completely honest, I think it was a lot for me to handle but I had help from a few people toward the end of planning it so it all worked out well.”

This is just one example of the students in clubs around WSHS coming together to unite the community. Although it was only for Halloween, this was an amazing way to show that they are making their mark around the community.