The student council from Elk Mound High School recently organized a clothing recycling program for struggling families from the school district.

The school district of Elk Mound has been blessed with a new project. Mounder Closet in a new non-profit program designed to recycle clothes for the less fortunate families and students. They had their first giveaway on the 22nd of April. Seven families from around the district came and got clothes for their families free of charge.

Mounders Closet is all about giving. The seven families that came, took over 40 percent of the clothes that were available. Each family could take as many clothing items as they wanted. Clothing ranged from s, m, l, xl, xxl, xxxl and also had options like kids, men's, and women's sizes.

The student council wants to expand the project to greater levels. They want to help as many families as they can. Deanna explained one way they are going to expand.

“They are going to make sheets for every school to have, and then parents can see them and fill it out if they are in need of clothing,“ Deanna said.

The work to set up for Mounders Closet was a very extensive and lengthy process. The student council started to prepare right after Christmas break and they have been working tirelessly since.

“We had to get all the lost and found bags, which was like 10 huge bags, and first short all the clothes into wash piles. From there, Mrs. George washed all the clothes by herself during her free time during her work day. We let had to sort all those clothes into categories like s, m, l, xl, xxl, and men's, women's, or children's. Then, after all that was done, I did most of the work with making sure everything was in the right place, cleaned up the area we were working at, getting the clothes into the bins, and then getting the bins on the carts that they were going to be stored on,” Kayla explained.

The student council didn’t come up with the idea for Mounders Closet though. Mr. Audorff’s leadership program is the one that started it. They washed a bag or two, but they didn’t have time for the project. Mr. Audorff then proposed the idea to the student council and they took and ran with it making it what it is today.

The seniors have mostly run the project this year. They hope that the juniors will follow their lead and keep the project going. The current seniors also hope that they expand the project more in the next year.

“I think next year it could be possible that we expand, we could get more clothing and try to get a ton of people to help run it,” Paige Romanowski stated. “I hope that they can make it bigger and help more people.”