The Battle Of The Shops. An annually held fundraiser that gathers perishable goods from all around the Edison community from students and staff to be donated to a local shelter in Jamaica, Queens. Why is it important to the community? Why should we care? 

SkillsUSA is the school organization in charge of the fundraiser. The Battle Of The Shops is a school tradition amongst the shop classes. The fundraiser allowed people to give back to the community and do good for those that are less fortunate than us. Now why is giving back significant?

The homeless issue in New York City is alarmingly high. According to coalitionforthehomeless.org, there were approximately 102,656 homeless people in the New York City Department Of Homeless Services. This number is extremely high. What makes this situation worse is that this is just including the homeless population that was able to seek help, not those that weren’t enrolled in the department. 

Donating is a great way to give back. And that is what the Edison community had sought to do. 

During previous years the fundraiser was held, 10,000 non-perishable foods were collected and donated to the community. And this year, the school was hoping to gather more. 

This year, according to the SkillsUSA community, around 3,500 items were collected. 

But what does this mean to the community? A fellow teacher at our school had things to say about it.

Mr.Perez, a Shop teacher at Edison had participated in the fundraiser this year. He felt that the organization “… is a great way for us to bring CTE awareness and spirit throughout our building and instill the leadership values of giving back to our students.” 

Fundraisers are sometimes seen as pointless to some, but students’ opinions can differ. 

Naseeba Khan, a Junior in the Cybersecurity Shop Class at Edison, said “I donated because it was an opportunity to help those in need and it aligns with my values as someone who cares about others.” 

As we can see, while some people may not like to donate, others feel that it adds to the value of their character and validates their moral beliefs of being a human being. 

Therefore, we can see how both students and the staff were able to see eye to eye in trying to do good in the community. The organization was successful in not only being able to give back to the community, but also being able to influence students.