Hundreds of cans. 

Dozens upon dozens of cases of bottled water. 

One community. 

The recent power outages left many without basic resources such as food, water, and heat. 

To help combat this problem, Wingspan, student council, and the PALS organization joined forces to host a donation drive on Monday for those affected by the winter storm. 

“We’re all out here, and we’re collecting donations for everyone that was affected,” junior Brady McNally said. “We’re just trying to do our part, we’re bringing canned foods, waters, and other items so we can help those in need. We have cars coming to drop stuff off, we’re helping take them out and we’re filling up cars with waters and items, so hopefully we can help our community.”

Students were able to earn volunteer hours for donating, but for junior Neha Leo, donating is an important part of giving back to her community. 

“I really wanted to donate because I felt like this kind of natural disaster is so out of our control and has completely turned people’s lives upside down,” Leo said. “Donating is the least I could do to help out. Especially with the devastation and unprepared nature of this storm, the drive was such a great opportunity to help those around me. I didn’t even know volunteer hours were involved so once I had heard, I bought a few more items to suffice the limit of the hours. But I think that volunteer hours are a great incentive to motivate others to donate.”

With more than nine car loads of food and water donated to the Frisco Family Services Food Pantry, the donation drive proved to be a success. 

“It’s great, we had a huge turnout of students,” PALS sponsor and English teacher David Barr said. “There’s a lot of people here helping and a lot of people have shown up to donate.”

Ultimately, through the donation drive, members of the community were able to support each other through troubling times. 

“We’re all Redhawks, we’re all in Frisco, but the bigger picture is that we’re all humans first,” teacher and coach Stephen Friar said. “When one human is suffering, we want to make sure that we do our best to help that person out. No matter what, we have each other’s backs. There’s a huge network of support here. We call ourselves the Redhawk family and that’s really true.”