National Honor Society inspires to raise values such as scholarship, service, leadership, and character in schools. The organization not only recognizes students for their academic work, but they also challenge them to get involved in their community. NHS has more than one million students that extend over the US, Canada, and all over the world. With this large pool of members, they can contribute: 1,000 hours of community service, $26,000 of charitable donations, and 100 pints of blood.

On April 16, 2022, Junction City High School’s NHS students helped the Junction City community by picking up trash. Mr. Rix organized everything, and the members all met together at the high school on a windy Saturday morning. Throughout their community service hours, they collected multiple bags of trash. They picked up trash from around the school and trash surrounding the nearby streets. Some of these items included:

• Masks
• Covid Tests
• A paper license plate
• Cigarettes
• Roofing tiles (from the December windstorm)
• Left over debris from construction

Rachel Cho, who has been a member of NHS for two years shared a bit about the experience.

“I think the teamwork was good, everyone helped out from what I saw. After we split up into groups [to cover more ground], I feel like everyone played their part in picking up trash. I thought it was fun overall. I felt very productive, and I felt like I was helping the community,” Cho said.

Sponsor Joseph Rix also shared his thoughts on the activity.

“I think it went pretty good. We got a whole truck full of garbage bags. I think there was probably like 12 altogether and it only took us an hour and a half, which that’s a lot of trash for such a short amount of time. Shout out to NHS. Good Job,” Rix said.