On Thursday, September 30th, the Students in Action club was one of four recognized nationally by Multiplying Good for their work in the community. 

     Multiplying Good is an organization founded by Jackie Kennedy with the intent of helping communities through service projects and individuals learn leadership skills. Their youth leadership program and daughter organization, Students in Action (SIA), aims to accomplish the same goal while also teaching students valuable life skills along the way.

     “We’re a service-based student leadership club,” SIA club sponsor Eduardo Torres said. “We do service work, or more importantly, we create service work. The students are challenged to identify a problem in their community. It can be in terms of Fishers, in terms of Indiana, it could even be a National problem. They then research solutions for their problems, figure out how they can be part of the solution to the problem and then they enact a project.”

     SIA has done more traditional service work in the past, such as food drives, but take a different spin on it by looking at what did and did not work and how they could improve it. Normally, they identify a need in the community, set a high-achieving goal, which they accomplish through separate committees dedicated to specific problems in the community.

     The club has three legacy committees that have been carried out for at least three years, but the two that were featured in their presentation were Community Connected – which focuses on building a better understanding between police and students in Fishers – and Unchained Brain – which focuses on improvement of mental health – as well as their podcast on systemic racism’s prevalence in community service for the presentation.

     “I felt super nervous, but also super excited,” Sophomore Maddy Collier said. “Our topic [systemic racism and racial injustice] was super important, and I definitely felt like it needed to be expressed and shared. My nervousness largely came from the fear of messing up, but overall I was just excited to experience it and work with my team to share what we had learned and the difference we had made in the community.”

     Normally, the presentations for the regionals, sectionals, and nationals are set up so each SIA club across the country submits a portfolio and gives a presentation highlighting what they had done that year. Last year, the presentations were entirely on Zoom, so the club members were able to play with the presentation more.

     “Our whole bit was that our powerpoint presentation didn’t work, so then as people were presenting, Collier looked like she was creating signs that she’s then holding up and throwing all over the place, which was entertaining,” Torres said. “We did that and won the regional, and then we redid the presentation for a national committee over the summer.”

     The win marks the third time that they have achieved top three at nationals over the course of their five year run at the school, and the members plan on continuing to expand their reach in the community and the types of service they do. More information on the club and their plans can be found at the Fishers Students in Action website.

     “We have a lot of new people who are joining and we are making a lot of changes,” Collier said. “We have new members forming new committees and then we have current committees that are expanding their outreach and trying to help more people.”