Making a difference

Around 30 girls from different grades filed into a Hoover High School chemistry classroom in October for the Student Activism for Women (SAW) club’s first meeting of the year. 

The club, founded in 2017 by a group of senior students, is striving to empower female students through community service and activism.

“We really had to figure out what charity we wanted to raise money for the whole year and what we really wanted to do because it was a brand new club,” said Audrey Caolbrese, a senior and SAW’s president.

Caolbrese was among the first group of women to join the club in 2018 after it was started by a close friend of hers, Katherine Stubblefield. During the club’s inaugural year, Caolbrese assisted the treasurer with the club’s financial duties.

She said SAW is her favorite out of all of the clubs she has been involved in. While other clubs’ memberships can enter the hundreds, SAW’s small population makes the experience of being involved feel more personal.

“I don’t feel like a small number in a club,” Caolbrese said.

SAW club sponsor and Hoover High School chemistry teacher Sabrina Jemison expects to see Caolbrese and the other club officers continue where the students from 2017 left off.

“I’m excited to have some younger girls in leadership which will be helpful [in 2019],” Jemison said. “We have over 40 girls, and they get the opportunity to serve others. They get the opportunity make a difference in someone’s life that has not gone as planned.”

The charity that the club has chosen to raise money for 2018-19 is the WellHouse, which provides shelter to women who are victims of human trafficking and sexual exploitation. 

WellHouse has a five-part process that helps usher the women it assists toward recovery, including the initial call to their crisis line. From there, women are brought to the WellHouse to stay for up to 90 days and be assigned to a social services employee. During her time at WellHouse, each woman goes through their Next Steps to Freedom program to help plan and set goals for the next stage of life. 

Caolbrese hopes that throughout the year, in addition to raising awareness about what SAW does, they will be able to raise awareness for the WellHouse and what they’re doing to help empower women.

In the club’s first meeting of the semester, the women hit the ground running, planning different fundraising events for the first and second semesters, as well as some holiday-themed events for December. 

In October, Hoover High School was in a competition against Mountain Brook High School to see which school could bring in the most donations of household goods. Hoover won with a total of 726 pounds of donations.