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Nineteen WestSide High School students will be joining thousands of students from around the state for WE Day at Key Arena in Seattle on Wednesday, April 20^th.  WE Day is a celebration of youth making a difference in their local and global communities.

Sheena Zacherle, Graduation Specialist at WestSide, says at the beginning of the year students commit to doing at least one local and one global campaign that involves social action, empowering others and helping others through the Free the Children Organization.

“We did a number of local campaigns,” says Zacherle, “including Operation Care Kits, where the kids donated 72 kits with socks, underwear, gloves, toothpaste, shampoo and other items to local organizations who handed them out in the winter to the homeless.”

In another project, WestSide students raised $6,700 through a spaghetti feed fundraiser to help 6-year-old cancer survivor Daniel Alvarez and his family. Alvarez had surgery for a malignant brain tumor last year and continues to undergo chemotherapy treatments at Seattle Children’s Hospital.

For their global campaign students sold Rafiki  bracelets made by women in Kenya. The proceeds went to an Adopt the Village fund for rebuilding schools in Haiti.

WE Day is all about celebrating the work that students have done all year on the behalf of others. “They have actors, musical performance, speakers, it’s concert, slash, motivational speaking all in one day,” says Zacherle.

The program includes highlights of some of the campaigns from around the state, and Zacherle is hoping that WestSide’s projects get featured.

“I feel we would do all those things anyway,” says Zacherle, “but what WE day gives them a celebration for what they have done.”