Young Women’s Efforts Assisting People at Home and Abroad
Most high schoolers are doing well to find ways to make a difference in their community. But can you imagine a young teenager making an actual impact on a global scale? That’s what’s happening at Tucker High School, where a group of young ladies in 2019 started up the STAR Club. STAR, which stands for Students Together Assisting Refugees, is exactly what its name would indicate; it seeks to provide assistance to those who have left their home countries and are trying to assimilate into American society.
Tsion Agaro, whose family hails from Ethiopia, is the club’s co-president. She says the mission of the club is personal.
“We see [our parents] struggle to talk to people who are already assimilated into American culture and, us being in both the cultures of our household and this culture, we’re able to bridge that gap and we’re able to speak for them whenever it’s necessary. We’re able to explain aspects of American culture they don’t understand,” said Agaro, a junior at THS.
The club has a two-pronged approach to helping refugees both here in the U.S. and globally. First, they work to raise awareness about what a refugee is and what kinds of challenges they face.
“We’re given the opportunity and the chance to help our communities,” said THS junior Edlawit Temesgen, also a co-president in the club. “We’ve seen our parents struggle and we’ve seen what they went through when we were younger, so it would basically be wrong for us not to go out and help our communities and those who actually need help now while we are given this opportunity.”
The second part of the mission is to raise money for refugees in far-flung countries like Yemen and Lebanon. They donate that money to a non-profit called Next Page. Next Page is the brainchild of another group of high schoolers, students out of Wellesley High School in Massachusetts. Money raised by Tucker High’s STAR Club is donated to Next Page for efforts here in the U.S. and abroad.
“I believe that this club is the first step towards bringing us together in the community and getting to know each other’s cultures and where we’re from and what’s going on with each other and just being able to come together as one,” explained explained Halle Bereket, the club’s secretary.
“It’s really important, especially with the school that we go to,” added THS junior Aryam Haile, the club’s vice president. “Because Tucker and Clarkston are so different, people in Tucker aren’t really aware of the issues and the struggles that kids from those countries go through. They don’t know how hard it is to read, to know the math, to catch up to [other students]. We’re just making a difference.”
The clock is ticking on these students, as they have just a year and a half left to establish their club at Tucker High. But the mission is one that they plan to continue once their days in Tucker are over.
“Because we love this club so much, we really do hope that the club still continues even after we go to college. We also plan on pursuing the club at our own colleges and trying to get that started up there,” Temesgen said.
With the momentum these young ladies have created, STAR’s important work is sure to carry on in the coming years, and Tucker will be a closer-knit community because of it.
Find out more about the STAR Club and how you can help their efforts on Instagram - @ths.star!
