On Friday May 20th, Madison High School held it’s annual Day of Service in which students can participate in volunteer opportunities, giving them the hours they need to graduate. The Day of Service project I joined was called Operation Jersey Cares. Our first order of operation was to drive to our local Shop Rite and collect donations and food from shoppers to give to the soldiers overseas. At first our project was running a little slow. We had shoppers that kept walking and didn’t even acknowledge that we were standing there, but after a little while we had tons of people throwing donations into our little blue bucket and filling our shopping cart with non-perishable food for our troops. After collecting donations at Shop Rite, we drove to Central Avenue Elementary School to pick up children with special needs who would help us pack all the food we collected into care packages.

 

MDO interviewed junior Riane Monaghan who participated in Operation Jersey Cares.

 

MDO: What did you think of your day of service project?

 

Riane: I love service day in general, I think it’s a fun day for us and I think it gives people who normally don’t volunteer a chance to

 

MDO: Did you find it rewarding and would you do it again?

 

Riane: I found it very rewarding. I did the Operation Jersey Cares project to send items that other people donated to military overseas. I think it is extremely rewarding because we’re helping out people that are fighting day and night for our country as well as spending time with younger kids who generally don’t have the opportunity to do these kind of things.

 

MDO: Would you do this project again? Did you pick this project by choice?

 

Riane: Yes I would 100% do it again. This was actually my second year doing it. I picked this project because I loved the concept and felt strongly about giving back to our military.
Thank you for answering our questions Riane! And thank you to everyone who helped in the Day of Service!