A Beal City high school student won an award and she took that money to help the less fortunate students in her district.

A Bus Trip Revealed Some Discrepancies At Her School

Rylee Sisco, a junior at Beal City High School near Mount Pleasant, was returning from a band field trip and on the way home they stopped to get some food. She noticed that a couple of the students didn’t get any food because they couldn’t afford it. This made her sad, so she decided to do something to help her less fortunate classmates.

Sisco’s idea was to start a give-and-take store for students at her school and so Rylee’s Closet was born. The store got up and running last fall and has items like clothes, shoes, shampoo, and soap, all for free.

Rylee Won An Award For Her Project

The teen recently submitted an essay about Rylee’s Closet to a state-wide competition on community improvement and took first place, winning $5-thousand. She’s putting all the money toward the closet and creating a care fund for the project so it can continue long after she graduates. She’s currently working on moving the space from a closet to a whole room. “So, we’ll have a ‘Rylee’s Room,’ maybe we can upgrade the title,” she says.

The biggest obstacle she has had to overcome was to get students to use the room.

“While it is confidential, you know, there’s always that ‘oh no, I need help, but I’m really embarrassed about it. But I think we need to push the idea that there’s no shame in getting help, and it’s okay to reach out and be like ‘I’m, I’m struggling, I need, I need something,” Sisco told WNEM. 

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