This school year, the Benefit Children Club which helps and provides materials for children in need of financial support, has officially taken off after the pandemic slowing down the club.

Founder Kaylee Rodriguez and her students came up with the idea that giving some support to children all over Cleveland in need would be beneficial and the idea should be shared with the school. This idea led her and her students to start the club.

The moto of Benefit club is “To help children who are in underserved areas who may not have full access to financial/home life necessities,” Rodriguez said. “I think the goal for the club is to help kids, whether it’s giving them extra meals or school supplies and other stuff.”

The club was not official last year but still had officers. Due to the old officers graduating and leaving, this left open spots for new officers. The position opened up leaving Lindsey Lebowitz as the newest head officer.

“[The purpose of the club is to] provide resources and help children throughout Cleveland that may not have access to needs,” Lebowitz said. “I think that this day in age, especially this year and last year, it’s really important to provide those resources because of covid-19. Being able to access canned food and all the school supplies that we will be providing in the drives.”

Another one of the newest head officers in the Benefit club is Brandon Silverstein, who runs the club and decides when and where the meetings are.

“There is no main meeting location yet but we have a Google classroom and have virtual meetings,” Silverstein said. “We have them once a month. We have not had our first one yet, but they are all random.”

To grow the club, Lebowitz has bigger goals and plans to start new activities for the club members to participate in drives and some volunteer work for the members.

“To become more active in the community a lot depends on how much we can do with Covid-19, and to help in children’s hospitals, food shelters and definitely a lot of drives,” Lebowitz said. “Like school supplies and canned food drives and collecting a lot of resources to give back.”