Abby Wolf, staff writer

Helping with the vaccine

Having to make the shift online from such a hands-on club, the club faced some difficulties during the beginning of the pandemic. 

“Especially since our club is so eldery-based and we can’t be around elderly people right now, it’s really hard,” Social Media Director junior Kate Kotlyar said. 

In order to safely stay in contact with seniors, Generations is working to help educate seniors on their vaccinations.

“Mrs. Garratt presented to our APUSH class an opportunity to, one, get extra credit, and two, help senior [citizens] get vaccinations,” Kotlyar said. 

“We’re working with a website called VaccinateCA and what they do is, because the vaccine rollout isn’t always the most organized and people don’t always know what’s going on, especially seniors who might not be as proficient with technology…we’ll call pharmacies and hospitals all over California and then we’ll get the most updated information about whether they have vaccines…and then we use that information to update the website,” President junio Maya Goldkorn said. 

Generations will next meet April 4. For more information on joining visit their website.

Generations goes global

The Generations club is taking new steps to expand their club both locally and globally. The purpose of the club is to volunteer at senior living centers. 

The club works with six other schools along with three chapters across California. Chapters are non-school oriented places for members of a community to work with senior citizens, without being part of a club.  

“We have students at different schools in California and also in Mexico,” club president junior Maya Goldkorn said. “We created a website and set up a system for creating new chapters.”

In order to begin expanding their club, the students needed to find different ways of reaching out to other schools.

“The two main ways we reached people were…through personal connections, so people currently in the club reached out to friends at other schools…and the other way was through social media,” Goldkorn said. 

Social media director junior Kate Kotlyar explained that social media has been an efficient way to grow the club.

“From what I understand [the student in Mexico] found us through our Instagram,” Kotlyar said. 

After the student in Mexico reached out with hopes of working with the club, Generations was ready with the equipment to begin. 

“She reached out to us and we already had all the tools to send to her and help her get started over there,” Goldkorn said.

Goldkorn explained that having chapters, such as the one in Mexico, has been really beneficial to the club and to students wanting to get involved.

“The cool thing about [chapters] is that it enables kids from other communities to join something too,” Goldkorn said. “Let’s say we have other kids in Mexico who get interested but don’t want to start a chapter, they already have a chapter in Mexico that they could tag on to.” 

Member junior Eli Ramer found the experience of working with senior citizens to be meaningful.

“I’ve gotten a new view of the world,” Ramer said. “It has definitely made me realize that to be happy you’ve got to do what you enjoy as many of the seniors did. It’s very fulfilling overall.”