Every year, Spectrum High School seniors have a class called Senior Capstone. This is where seniors take on real life challenges which will help them in the future. It helps them go out and help their local community. This year two students stood out for their projects and what they did.

One of the students is Gabe Redding. He focused on helping the homeless community in Anoka. He partnered with Stepping Stones, for his project.

Gabe Redding said, “My project was about helping the homeless by getting supplies to them through a donation drive.”

The reason he chose Stepping Stones for his organization is because their goal is to help the homeless get out of Poverty. His first donation drive did not go to plan.

When he found out his local Church was doing a Thanksgiving drive  “my main thought was I have a really big church that doesn’t often have donation drives going on, but turns out that they had a Thanksgiving drive coming up really soon before Thanksgiving that was pretty much right in between the time I had”, He went around his neighborhood gathering supplies. This helped him exceed his goals for his drive. “And I ended up going around my neighborhood and getting supplies that way, which worked way better than I thought it would.,” said Gabe.

Redding sai, “Probably the biggest thing I learned was to try things even if you don’t think they’ll work. Going around my neighborhood worked way better than I expected.”

After the people at Stepping stones counted everything out, he helped around 60 individuals, giving around $1,500 in supplies.

The other senior that stood out was Will Simmons. For his project he worked to try and solve the problems of adapting toys for children with disabilities.

Will said, “My project was about switch-adapting toys for kids with disabilities like low-functioning autism or developmental delays.”

While working with Hearts and Hands Will learned to solder and alter toys, so now they can be operated using a big button.

Usually these devices are really expensive.

With his work he helped around 40 families,who might not have or can afford them.

He even recorded a tutorial so that people can learn to alter toys by themselves. He helped lots of families avoid paying more.