Wasatch County High School students are working with a Heber City business owner and nonprofit group to make the season a little more merry and bright for families in need.
Looking toward a career in business, high school senior Cassidee Watters entered Wasatch County School District’s Center for Advanced Professional Studies. Once in the program, she and fellow student Gabby Fife started working with Stacy Harfert, the owner of Heber-City based Roonies Ice Cream.
“I feel like I’ve been really lucky. I’ve gotten great students who have always been really motivated and excited to do projects that I’ve done,” Harfert said.
Watters has had fun working under Harfert’s direction.
“I get real world problems and real world solutions,” she said.
Nearing the holiday season, Harfert wanted to find a way to give back to the community that helps support her frozen-dessert endeavors.
Last year, she said students in the professional studies program helped her to gather and package beans and rice meals.
“All the donations came from people in Wasatch,” she said. “Fast forward a year, we’ve done about 5,000 bags.”
Around 250 volunteers have helped with the process, she added.
This year, she approached Watters and Fife in search of another idea.
“The girls came to me and said, ‘Well, we want to do a toy drive,'” Harfert remembered. “I said, ‘Great.'”
She reached out to the Christian Center of Park City — the same organization that had helped her distribute the beans and rice meals — and found that they were interested in restarting their toy drive initiative that had been altered to other forms of community assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Harfert and her advanced professional studies students worked to coordinate the drive with Heber Valley businesses and promote the effort while the Christian Center found families whose holiday season could benefit from some community generosity.
Watters and Fife had opportunities to design social media posts, coordinate donation box locations, and reach out to the community to help with the drive.
“I’ve had them draft an email and I said, ‘OK, so if I were to rewrite it, here is how I would do it,'” Harfert said. “Doing social media is something that they’re a lot better at than I am, so I actually end up learning from them. So there’s a benefit, I feel like, on both sides.”
Watters said she knows first-hand just how meaningful something like a toy drive can be to kids who otherwise might not receive gifts.
“I used to be one of those kids,” she said. “It meant a lot to me.”
Harfert moved to Heber City from Seattle in 2019 and got active with the PTA.
“When I saw the need on so many students for just a lack of what they had for resources here compared to where I came from, it was really eye-opening,” she said. “I just feel like companies need to reciprocate. I’ve been supported with my business with Roonies Ice Cream here.”
In a county rife with luxury developments, second homes and private jets, she said it isn’t hard to overlook people who don’t fall into upper-class categories.
“It’s really hard to be able to support yourself on even $20 an hour,” she said. “Then if you have a few kids and stuff like that, it’s hard. … The food pantry is busy.”
Watters said she hopes people remember that some kids’ Christmases are at least partially reliant on the generosity of the community.
“I hope parents know that some kids don’t have the benefits as other kids,” she said. “Hopefully, that helps them donate and it truly makes kids happier.”
Donations are being accepted through Wednesday at 30 locations throughout the Heber Valley.
