For the past eight years, the Make-A-Wish Foundation has been at the core of Arapahoe’s annual week of philanthropy, traditionally called “Wish Week.” This year, however, the Student Council officers and sponsors have decided to make some serious changes.
“The school has decided to change from Wish Week to Warrior Week to expand our charitable reach,” Student Council co-sponsor Lauren Lee said.
The name was changed from the traditional Wish Week to the new name of Warrior Week to reflect its new mission.
Warrior Week will now focus on both global and local issues and charities. The class officers were asked to research possible beneficiaries for this new focus.
“Each class did presentations on two organizations and the whole Student Council voted on which two they wanted to go with,” Assistant Principal Mary Gottlieb said. “The discussion was [in favor of] something more local and something that was more global.”
After these presentations, two organizations were chosen by the Student Council to become beneficiaries of Arapahoe’s kindness.
“The targets for our fundraising efforts, as voted upon by officers and the general council, include the Dalit Freedom Network and St. Jude’s Hospital,” Lee said. “Due to our value of the unique relationship we share with the Native American, we will also donate a portion of the money raised to the Denver Indian Center.”
There was also a strong desire amongst Student Council members and sponsors to switch up the organizations that receive Arapahoe’s funds so that students would learn about struggles outside the community.
“We wanted to expand and let our school grow, so we wanted to do something different this year,” sophomore class president Anish Punjabi said. “[AnnaSophia Robb] brought up the Dalit Freedom Network at our meeting. It’s been really up to the sophomore class to lead this Dalit Freedom Network project, so we’re definitely looking forward to it.”
One of the potentially problematic issues with the change of Warrior Week’s focus was the distance between the students and their cause.
“One of the things we were worried about was, ‘Okay, here’s an organization that’s far from us. How do we bring that to our students?’” Gottlieb said. “We get to pick the area we’re going to fund; we can Skype with people and it makes it real for us. You’re not just looking at pictures of people being helped, you’re actually able to talk to people.”
Although the new tradition will no longer be linked to the Make-A-Wish Foundation, Gottlieb is thankful for eight years of collaboration with the foundation.
“We told the Student Council to look at what the organizations did, where the money went, and how much money went exactly to where we were looking at,” Gottlieb said. “[The Wish Foundation] could have been brought forth. The people at the Wish Foundation have been great; they are the ones who nominated us for the high school philanthropy award.”
The change of title will not mean a change in tradition. Warrior Week will still have the same schedule of events as Wish Week always had—the cause will be the only different factor.
“We want to do the basketball games that we did last year, that was a ton of fun,” Punjabi said. “We’d like to have the CU Buffoons come so we should get a lot of money from that Every penny counts.”
Therefore, the intent of the change from Wish Week to Warrior Week was not to start new school-wide traditions. It was instead meant to be an opportunity for students to learn about suffering existing outside of their sheltered society.
“The main thing is that we want to get everyone aware,” Punjabi said. “The special part of [the new Warrior Week] is you know you’ve made a difference and can [see] the lives you’ve impacted.”