Leaders of the new PetConnect Club, which meets during advisory in room 142 on the first Thursday of every month, say they are excited to support the PetConnect Rescue organization through volunteer activities.
As the school year begins, new clubs and student organizations often do too. One of these groups is the PetConnect Club, started this year by junior Leila Alam and senior Stephen Cheng, who serve as co-presidents. Alam said she has “always loved doing service… involving animals,” including fostering cats and helping to train veteran service dogs, and “wanted to bring [her] passion for that to school.”
The club is connected to the larger non-profit organization PetConnect Rescue, founded in 2005 in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, whose mission is to rescue abandoned cats and dogs from euthanasia. The organization finds fosters for these pets and holds adoption events to connect them with their forever home, as well as conducting donation drives and community education around pet needs. Junior Mia Stubbins, a club officer, said that the club will be an “interactive way to give back to your community” because members will be able to “actually work at events” hosted by the Rescue.
Currently, co-presidents Alam and Cheng are focused on organizing club activities for the school year. This includes an appearance at the school’s upcoming Fall Festival where the PetConnect Rescue will be bringing “some pups that [students] can come and say hello to,” Alam said. Additionally, Alam said they are working on getting PetConnect Club involved in the rescue’s McLean Pet Fest.
Right now, club leaders are working on preparing for future meetings and the school year ahead–Stubbins said she has been “creating slideshows” for meeting presentations and “organizing information about all the events to sign up for.” Emphasizing the importance of member recruitment, Stubbins also said that she is hoping for “a lot of people to help out” with PetConnect Rescue by volunteering through PetConnect Club.
Generally, the club will participate in a wide variety of events in partnership with the PetConnect Rescue, primarily through volunteer work. Alam said the club will be “very social” and include a range of activities, from helping with adoption events to raising awareness and, broadly, “promoting the PetConnect organization, in hopes of getting [their] animals… adopted.”
The organization hosts “several events [per] month” so club members will have autonomy over how much they want to participate, Stubbins said.
Students interested in joining the PetConnect Club, which held its inaugural meeting on Oct. 10, can follow the club’s Instagram account for information about meetings and activities, along with an in-bio link to join the email list for regular updates, at @petconnectwhs.
Additionally, anybody can attend their monthly meetings, the next of which will be held in November. The room belongs to club sponsor and ASL teacher Lea Clark, who said she wanted to sponsor the club due to her love of animals. “It hurts my heart that people treat animals [poorly]… you should join [PetConnect Club] if you want to help animals,” Clark said.
