Two students at Pattonville High School took the initiative to give back to the community this Christmas. Haley Edmonds and Jaxon Luraschi both separately took the initiative to give back.

Haley Edmonds decided to start her own charity to give back to the community. She came up with her idea for Pattonville Gives after looking into the Angel Tree program: “ I just wanted to create something for Pattonville that would help.” She decided to focus on Pattonville area families because “I know a lot more people in the district so I feel like I would be helping a lot more people.”

Though there were a lot of steps to start this charity, Edmonds says the hardest part was “trying to get out of my shell and actually talk to people about it.”

Haley and Jaxon have always had the initiative to start or join a charitable endeavor, but the recent circumstances have shown how much people are in need. Haley says, “I thought because of COVID and everything, this would be the perfect chance to start something.”

She started by emailing teachers at the high school level then the district level. After that she got a team together. Haley says her success for this project is “getting my idea out into the open, basically getting it off the ground. I’m not expecting anything to be huge or a lot of stuff to go on and everything to be super popular. I just want it to get off the ground.”

Here is the link for more information: https://sites.google.com/psdr3.org/pattonville-gives/home

Jaxon Luraschi has been volunteering for three years for the Pattonville Fire Department’s Christmas Toy Drive. Jaxon is a senior now, but since sophomore year he has known what he wanted to do with his life. He has wanted to be a firefighter because “I just want to make a positive difference, I guess you could say that to the world.”

Sophomore year he emailed firemen in the Pattonville District asking about charities he could help with. On top of wanting to make a positive impact he says that “I just wanted to do something good during high school, because I have all these sports and other stuff and I just wanted to do something outside of that, that was just a good thing to do for the community.”

This year in particular has been extra hard on families, in light of the pandemic and companies losing business and having to shut down for months at a time. “2020 has not been that great of a year, and I wanted to do something, help some kids out and make a positive difference.”

Jaxon likes giving. “Just being able to make another person’s day, or a child or whoever you’re giving to, to help them out, I value that and it’s a good thing.” His favorite part is, “When I get to deliver the toys…You get to see the children pick them up and they are all happy and excited about it.”

They were able to collect over 100 toys for Pattonville families. Jaxon’s advice for anyone wanting to give back to the community is “just go through with it. I spent a lot of time looking and not actually doing anything about it. Just taking that step to start doing something actually is a big thing.”

Here is the link for more information, https://www.pattonvillefd.com/news-items/2020/11/8/annual-christmas-toy-drive-fill-up-the-fire-truck

Giving back to the community isn’t just a seasonal thing. Research and find out what you can do to help out the Pattonville Community.