Clubs promote friendship and awareness in SOSPOP

The first annual Season of Service, Period of Peace (SOSPOP) began on Martin Luther King Jr. Day (Jan. 15) and will continue until March 31, promoting friendship and awareness at CVHS and in the Castro Valley community. SOSPOP is club based, and every week, different clubs collaborate to create events that pertain to the theme that those clubs have chosen. Interact, Red Cross, and Key Club, along with 21 others, are participating in SOSPOP this year.

This year’s SOSPOP themes are mental health awareness, providing basic needs, religious tolerance and minorities, women’s rights and empowerment, environmental consciousness, education, music as a bridge, deaf culture, women in engineering, and Latino culture awareness.

Interact, Girls Learn International, and Response worked together during Feb. 5-9 to conduct activities surrounding women’s rights and empowerment. One of the activities was an anonymous survey regarding the sexual harassment.

Result showed that 246 students out of the 709 who participated in the survey have been affected by sexual harassment in some way. That’s 35 percent of the students who answered the survey.

“The purpose of the survey was for all of us to be more aware that sexual harassment is a problem everywhere, it’s even an issue that’s prevalent at our school and affects the students on our campus…it was meant to be an eye opener,” said Interact President Simone True.

Red Cross and Key Club collaborated for SOSPOP during Jan. 29-Feb. 2; their theme for that week was providing basic needs. To promote this theme, members of both Red Cross and Key Club worked with each other and put together care packages for the less fortunate in the community.

“We collaborated with our activities and it was very fun working with another board to plan events and raise awareness,” said Patrice Cheung, Key Club editor.

“Our theme was providing basic needs, so our activity putting together care packages was done to provide the less fortunate with basic necessities,” said Red Cross Treasurer Katherine Jin.

Clubs like Interact, Red Cross, and Key Club will be participating in SOSPOP until March 31 and will continue to contribute to the community by promoting the feeling of unity and support throughout CVHS and Castro Valley.