San Jose, CA — Pre-College Programs Upward Bound high school students organized a clothing and toy drive that generated over 1,000 items that were donated to local Bay Area charities in San Jose.  

Students chose two charities to distribute the overwhelming amount of donations.  Sunday Friends, who works primarily to help low income families and The Emergency Housing Consortium, a charity who helps runaway and throwaway homeless teenagers.  

About 100 UB students dropped off bags of toys, blankets and warm clothes for teenagers, children and adults. Items were collected at the Office of Pre-College Programs during after school tutoring hours.  

Once the clothing and toy drive was over eight UB students donated their time to assist Los Bomberos of Northern California, a non profit organization that strives to improve fire protection to communities in Northern California. Students were eager to lend their hands to sort through mountains of toys so that the fire fighters would have an easier time distributing items to all the recipients. 
 
“UB students have given a lot to the community after the can food drive they organized for The Emergency Housing Consortium in November,  they were determined to continue serving their community by volunteering their time and donating items,” said Elizabeth Chavarín, PCP Special Projects Coordinator.  

In the past month UB students organized a food, clothing and toy drive and volunteered their time with non-profit organizations focused on giving back to the community. At the same time students were attending after school tutoring and studying for assignments before they go on winter break.

There will still be more community service projects that students are looking at helping in the upcoming months. Some of those projects include but are not limited too community improvement and education.

“In the spirit of community service giving back to those in need, help students learn the value of sharing and giving back to the community,” said Frank Castillo, PCP Director.
Upward Bound is a program located at San Jose State University. UB helps low-income first generation high school students by enabling them to learn how to learn so that they may attain success in the college of their choice.

For more information about UB please visit http://pcp.sjsu.edu