East Leyden wrapped up its participation in Teens for Jeans this Friday with nearly 100 jeans packed in donation boxes. Teens For Jeans is a country-wide campaign that provides homeless teenagers with jeans. The campaign, sponsored by dosomething.org and Aeropostale,  encourages high school students to get their school involved by offering a $10,000 scholarship to the student which organizes the most successful campaign within their school.

Juniors Mati Szelazek, Kamila Nozka, and Liz Shelton introduced Leyden to Teens for Jeans with the help of Director of Student Activities Mr. Tony Pecucci.

“I work for Aeropostale, which is one of the sponsors, and the manager asked me to get my school involved.” shared Kamila Nozka.

“Kamila, Liz, and I also all got an email about Teens for Jeans from their other sponsor, dosomething.org, which gave us the opportunity to get Leyden involved and help out the community. Along with Aeropostale, Mr.Pecucci was a big help in successfully organizing the campaign and getting donations.” added Mati Szelazek.

“When I found out that Leyden was involved in Teens for Jeans, I encouraged my ACCESS students to donate. Mentors in each ACCESS classroom pushed students to participate and we ended up collecting multiple bags of jeans.” said Senior ACCESS Mentor Gabriella Hoeflich.

“It feels really good to have been a part of this campaign, especially because the donations are going to homeless teenagers our age. Aeropostale is sticking to the community, so maybe a kid from Leyden is going to get a pair of jeans, which is amazing!” said Mati Szelazek.

Given that the campaign only went on for 2 weeks at Leyden and collected almost 100 pairs of jeans, Teens for Jeans was a tremendous success and displayed outstanding teamwork. The student organizers disclosed that Leyden will continue participating in the jean drive as long as Aeropostale keeps doing Teens for Jeans.