New club on campus

The Eagle Outreach club allows students to participate in a different service organization per quarter.

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Disha Surana

Surana gets ready to film her video reading a children’s story. The videos have been sent to Team Long Run.

When most people find out they don’t have to go to school for a couple months, they take it as a time to relax. For Junior Disha Surana, the COVID-19 quarantine became an opportunity. Having a mass of extra time, Surana started the Eagle Outreach club.

“I created [Eagle Outreach] during March when we had just switched to virtual,” Surana said. “Everyone had a bulk of time, so I was like let’s do something. We all have time. [We] might as well make the most of it.”

Eagle Outreach is a club that dedicates its resources towards a different organization each quarter. At the monthly meetings, members present ideas and vote for which cause the club will focus on next.

“The reason I did this is because everything’s changing,” said Surana. “I don’t know what’s going to happen in the world, so I was like, I can’t really pick a specific thing to help because there’s never going to be something that needs 100 percent of our attention 100 percent of the time.”

At the start of COVID, Surana and her club members jumped at the chance to help out. The club made over 550 cards to give to doctors at Mission hospital.

“We were like, we could help the patients or help the doctors, and I was like well everyone’s helping the patients, but I feel like we’re forgetting about the actual doctors who are going through this,” said Surana.

Once the club members finished the cards, Surana drove to Mission hospital with four other club members, delivering the cards to the Director.

Now, Eagle Outreach is focusing on making videos of club members reading children’s books to donate to Team Long Run.

Surana remembers the excitement of looking for picture books in the library when she was young. The library and school closures due to COVID have prevented a lot of kids from having this same experience. Surana hopes that children can feel that connection through the videos.

“It’s the face to face meeting which is what’s missing because of schools being closed,” said Surana.

The club is also accepting hand-maid masks and blankets for donation. Future projects include partnering with Laura’s House to donate girls clothing in December and creating care baskets with toothbrushes and hygienic products for kids.

With 79 club members so far, Eagle Outreach uses social media as a main means of communication, especially in response to not having club rush this year. They even have Motivational Mondays, posting bible verses and quotes to get students through the week.

“I think that’s what makes us a little different because [Eagle Outreach] is very very much social media based,” said Surana. “We’re always posting and trying to get people involved through that aspect.”

Students can join Eagle Outreach through filling out the form in their Instagram’s bio, @eagle_outreach.