Students crowded around a table in the rally court, spooning colorful sprinkles onto sugar cookies, writing down random acts of kindness, or taking bites out of their frosting-covered treat at lunch on Thursday, Sept. 12. For the fourth day of Lions Week, Leo Club, a service organization on campus, set up a station for students to decorate free cookies, receive red balloons or write messages on an acts of kindness poster. According to senior and president Ted Chai, Leo Club’s marketing team created Lions Week, named after Leo Club’s parent organization branch, Lions Clubs International, to foster a spirit of volunteerism at MVHS.

“The goal of the week is just to promote the ideas of service — doing something not for yourself, but for the community,” Chai said. “All the events that we are having this week are more fun themed. They’re not directly related to volunteerism, but they’re just more to get our name into the MVHS community and have some fun and donate to charity while we’re doing that.” 

For every cookie decorated, Leo donated a proportional amount of food to Second Harvest, a nonprofit organization and food bank in Silicon Valley. 

For another Lions Week event at the rally court on Monday, Sept. 9, students and teachers faced off for three rounds of tug of war with  Leo donating $100 to an organization of the winning team’s choice. The teachers came out victorious in tug of war and chose to donate to Lions Clubs International. On the same day, Leo also held a headband event. For every faculty member who wore a lion mane headband, Leo donated $5 to RIP Medical Debt, a nonprofit organization dedicated to aiding medical debt.

“As delicious as these cookies are, my favorite day was still Monday, since I got to see [principal Ben] Clausnitzer in the lion [headband], which was kind of hilarious,” Chai said. “Aside from it just being funny, it was an extension of our commitment to help donate to relieve medical debt.”

With approximately 15 members participating in the headband event and additional help from Lions International, Leo Club expects to donate about $5,000 for medical debt. Aside from raising money for charity, Leo Club also had another motivation for holding Lions Week — to spread the word about Leo around campus. The weeklong event culminated in its first interest meeting on Friday, Sept. 13.

“The cookies and balloons aren’t directly related to being a volunteer, but they’re more so just to make sure that we get established in the MVHS community,” Chai said. “People know about us — they know about our goals, our values and hopefully they come to our interest meeting this Friday and sign up to be volunteers.”

According to sophomore and Director of Membership Andy Xu, this week has been a success — both in terms of promoting Leo Club and spreading kindness in the community.

“Honestly, I’m just happy that everyone else is happy because giving out cookies has been fun,” Xu said. “It’s all been going to plan, so I think it’s working.”

For junior Naimisha Adira, who isn’t a Leo Club member but decided to participate in the cookie decorating after hearing about the event from her sister, Lions Week provided a well-timed break from school stress.

“It’s nice for kids to be able to relax a little because even though it is the fourth week of school, it’s still sort of stressful for a lot of people,” Adira said. “So it’s nice to have somewhere, a place where you can really destress and have fun.”