For the past month and a half, students and parents in the CESJDS community have been notified of a multitude of fundraisers occurring. All the proceeds from these fundraisers will be going towards helping Ukrainian refugees.

The freshman class is holding a walk-a-thon,  the sophomore class is hosting a March Madness competition and the junior class organized a ping-pong tournament and flower selling. Additionally, the student council is holding a raffle with all of the proceeds going to Ukraine.

“The fundraising using the March Madness bracket is a really good way to raise money because everyone is very into it and it is a very popular thing going on right now,” sophomore secretary of community service Anna Leinwand said.

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine, resulting in a mass migration out of the country. The rise in Ukrainian refugee numbers has created a lack of food, medical care and many hygienic products and people all around the world are raising money to help.

“When Russia first invaded Ukraine, we decided it was important to do something meaningful.  We called the Jewish Federation to find out what information they had that they could share. They informed us that it was too difficult and expensive to collect items and ship them to Poland and that it would be much more effective if we raised money,” Dean of Students Roslyn Landy said.

The money raised by fundraisers throughout the school will be donated to two charities in order to help Ukrainian refugees. The first charity, Central Kitchen,  is a food bank run by chef Jose Andres and the second charity is a medical group that is helping Ukrainian refugees called Heart to Heart.

The student body as well as the JDS community have additionally been participating in educational activities to raise awareness for the situation in Ukraine. Each grade had an assembly in order to talk about the conflict and inform the students on what was going on in the world so that they would know the cause they were contributing toward.

“Kids now are way more in-tune with the news now than they were when I was a high school student ten years ago, so I think that really contributes to kids feeling that activism and wanting to do something,” Math teacher Robbie Shorr said.

In order to raise money, Landy met with each grade’s student government to come up with fundraisers. The grade governments were tasked by Landy to come up with a doable and interactive fundraising campaign.

“Usually grade events are something that are not as obvious, this is something that was such an obvious thing that all the grades wanted to do something for,” Shorr said.

The only way that JDS’ efforts will be effective is if students as well as the rest of the community participate in the efforts.

“I hope our students are taking it seriously and donating to help the refugees;  I am hopeful that we will raise a lot of money,” Landy said.