Chantilly Key Club Stories: Past Volunteer Experiences

Annalisa Le

A time I have volunteered in October was in middle school. There was this program at my local church that helped kids to learn Vietnamese from kindergarten to freshman year in high school. It was held every Friday from 7 pm to 8:30 pm. As the season of Halloween was progressing, taking over the decor of stores, my mom decided to annually give out Halloween candy to the children after classes are done. A few days prior to Halloween, my mom and I went to every local store like Target, Costco, and Party City to get masses of goodie bags, ties, and candy packs that were on sale. My mom invited two of her friends to help with the assembling of the goodie bags, as a result we had like 5 boxes of goodie bags to hand out. On the day of class, we came early to load the boxes into the entrance of the school building area of our local church. As children ran out of the hallway, they crowded around us as we handed out the bags. The kids were laughing and already taking out the bags, trading their candies with their friends. They even started asking for seconds just because there was a box of leftovers after. Not only did we hand out goodie bags, but I realized my mom even held a fundraiser outside the school entrance by selling Vietnamese foods. There was a wide range from Vietnamese egg rolls to an assortment of Vietnamese desserts such as fried sesame balls and honeycomb cake, so I helped sell the food and packaged food to customers until 9:00 with my friends who stayed back as well. It was a very busy night but it was also very fun.