FAN hosts hygiene drive

Sisters Family Access Network (FAN) is leading a hygiene drive at Sisters High School, April 5-16.

FAN strives to guarantee that all children and teenagers have basic needs met in food, shelter, medical, etc. to help them attend school ready to learn.

Advocate Dawn Cooper came up with the idea for a hygiene drive with Nickolas Saba, a senior at Sisters High School. Saba had approached Cooper asking what SHS could do to support FAN and the families in need in the community of

Sisters.

Cooper explained that many of the families that go to FAN for their services have one or two parents who are unemployed, and many are on food stamps. While food stamps help with groceries, they do not cover hygiene products such as shampoo and conditioner, hand soap, toothpaste, toilet paper and laundry detergent. These items can be very expensive, causing strain for the families. By doing a hygiene drive at the high school, students can help relieve this strain.

"If these items are available at the FAN office, then families will know they can come and get some hygiene products once a month and can then use the money they saved to buy more groceries, buy gas, or pay a bill," said Cooper.

More details about items accepted in the hygiene drive will be explained this week at the high school.

What many students who are free of these family difficulties don't realize is that the need for hygiene products and the other services that FAN provides is constantly increasing and affecting the lives of many around them.

"For me, it is always nice to see a family rise out of their situation and succeed at either getting a job, acquiring medical insurance for their kids, or putting food on the table... it's the little things like these that are always the really big things," said Cooper.

By donating to the hygiene drive, even if it is just one tube of toothpaste, students and community members can experience a little taste of this feeling - that something they did is helping someone in need, whether that is a stranger or an old friend in their

town.