Last Updated on November 22, 2021 4:05 pm
BOONE — Members of Watauga High School’s Interact Club spent last weekend working to split, stack and deliver firewood to families in need of heating fuel for the coming winter. The group partnered with members of Boone United Methodist Church’s Firewood Ministry to complete the day of service.
Susan Irving, a business and marketing teacher at WHS who acts as the club’s advisor, said the Interact Club is a Boone Sunrise Rotary-partnered organization with 40 student members that works on two service projects each month, one that benefits their school community and one that helps the community at large.
Irving said student officers in the club select a project each month that others can volunteer to participate in. For this month’s project, the Interact Club’s Social Media Manager Anna Grace Anderson chose to collaborate with the BUMC Firewood Ministry.
Irving said a group of 11 Interact Club members worked in various stages of preparing firewood for delivery to homes.
“Our students got safety training from the Firewood Ministry and were quickly able to jump and help. We had a few students who helped chop wood, while others helped to stack wood and load trucks for delivery,” Irving said.
By the end of the day, the students and other volunteers had a four foot tall by forty foot long woodpile ready to be loaded into trucks and delivered to homes. Irving said more than two dozen families are served each winter by the Firewood Ministry project.
Irving said her students left the day with a new appreciation for the difficult work that’s involved in heating a home primarily with wood.
“I think they really got a sense of how much physical labor goes into preparing firewood for heating,” Irving said. “It was a very cold morning, too — around 20 degrees — so they could see how important it was to help provide firewood for these families.”
Fred Fonville, Logan Irving, Max Midgett, Ella Irving, Madison Irving, Mia Libre, Samantha Lang, Mia Shanley, Sophie Wampler, Freyja Tzotschew, and Advisor Susan Irving pose with the part of the firewood they helped to prepare.
Watauga High School student Sophie Wampler splits a piece of firewood while Boone United Methodist Church Firewood Ministry leader Fred Fonville looks on.
