Senior projects – most seniors have no idea what to do, but to this group it came naturally.

Yeohoon Youn said, “We came up with this project after watching a documentary about the Bible. We were motivated to do good from the film, so my friend Lucian came up with the idea and so I incorporated it.” On March 20th, Jason Schlottman, Camila Ibarra, Ana Lopez, and Yeohoon  drove tons of bags filled with hundreds of t-shirts they collected from the community to the Nogales Border. However, they ran into complications when they  were denied by an agent, telling them that they needed to have special documents for them to pass. Still, the group wasn’t going down without a fight, so these determined seniors parked their car and walked across the boarder hoping to obtain the right documents that they needed to donate the t-shirts. Unfortunately there was no luck that day, and the seniors had to return home. “I was disappointed that the trip did not go as we had anticipated, but I became more determined to get the donations across,” said Scholttman.

On April 19th, the group returned to Mexico  and were able to bring the clothes to an organization called Kino Boarder Initiative.  This organization donates clothes to all of those in need, all over Mexico. The Kino Board Initiative was started in 2008 by six major organizations, the California Province of the Society of Jesus, Jesuit Refugee Service/USA, the Missionary Sisters of the Eucharist, the Mexican Province of the Society of Jesus, the Diocese of Tucson, and the Archdiocese of Hermosillo.  They have been working for about 9 years as a refugee service, in Nogales, Sonora and Nogales, Arizona. “They were really thankful and happy for the donations. They were also very kind to us!” This was the reaction the Kino Administation volunteers had when they gave the donations.

Both Yeohoon and Jason felt successful at the end of the project. “I feel the project turned out better than we had hoped…I felt a sense of relief that all the planning and hard work paid off and I felt proud of our accomplishments,” Jason Scholttman said.

Special thanks to people who helped out with the project: Camilla Ibarra, Ana Lopez, Lucian Wulf, Jared Valin, Shanglin Li, Jimmy Mai, Eunha Kim, Taylor Antilano,