Supporting American Newcomers At Home (SANAH), a school chapter of a program created by the non-profit Miry’s List, hosted a bake sale fundraiser Jan. 4 during lunch on the quad. All proceeds from the fundraiser went towards aiding refugee families to learn English.
SANAH Co-Leader Sophia Vourakis ’24 said donations would be used to purchase laptops for the refugees so that they could take online English lessons.
“The proceeds of the fundraiser will be put towards purchasing laptops to be sent to the refugee children,” Vourakis said. “Many of them live on the other side of the country, so the meetings take place on Zoom and they will need [the laptops] to connect. We are so grateful to everyone who donated and helped us keep the program going.”
Vourakis said she co-created a chapter of SANAH at school with Ava Seib ’24 after the SANAH summer program lost funding because she wanted to continue to help refugee families.
“I have participated in the SANAH summer program for the past two summers, in which high school students are paired with Syrian and Afghani children who are new to the US to teach them about American customs and traditions,” Vourakis said. “It was really upsetting for me to find out last May that there were no funds for last summer’s program and it wouldn’t be able to run. I was able to raise the money last year so that we could have SANAH last summer, but in order to have a more stable source of funds for future programs, I decided to start a club with Seib.”
Although she does not have a personal connection to SANAH, Sarah Anschell ’26 said she bought baked goods from the fundraiser because she wanted to support their cause and help families in need.
“I donated to SANAH because I think the mission behind the bake sale is meaningful and deserves awareness,” Anschell said. “It’s important to have safe spaces for diverse groups of people at school to make sure that the school as a whole is a place where people feel comfortable talking about issues that matter to them. I hope students would want to contribute to helping refugee families regardless of whether they have a personal tie [to the cause] or not.”
Savvy Mahoney ’25 said while she did not know about SANAH before, she decided to donate because she thought that it was important to be educated about and support different issues.
“In a place like this, community is super important and it’s crucial that people have a place where they can foster [a safe] environment,” Mahoney said. “I saw the fundraiser on the quad the other day and thought it was a good cause so I decided to donate. I think that students who have the means to support causes that they believe in should. I wanted to help in any way that I could, which, in this situation, was donating and learning about the cause.”
