Hosting their annual Winter Social and classic gingerbread house-making contest, Outreach Club came together to celebrate the upcoming holiday season on Friday, Dec. 6 in Club Sponsor Mr. Drake Clapp’s room.
After placing out plates, utensils, and food, club officers kicked off the winter social by letting club members get food. Camaraderie filled the air as members bonded while eating and coversing.
“Everyone is so kind and so much fun,” Elisabeth Roell ‘27 said. “Even if I don’t know people, the activities that we get to do let me meet new people and bond. Everyone’s so nice and everyone is so motivated.”
Following their presentation of the December events, Outreach Club officers passed out gingerbread house kits and the members split up into teams. Every team worked together to create unique gingerbread houses in hopes of winning the competition.
“It’s always been Outreach tradition to host the gingerbread competition, so I went off of that [when organizing],” President Sahiti Oruganti ‘25 said. “We also got a ton of food and we played some Christmas music, and that was our winter social.”
Oruganti and Bailey Zhang ‘25, club officers, acted as judges to pick the top two gingerbread houses. Teams gave their explanations about their gingerbread houses while Oruganti and Zhang listened. Finally, they announced the winners: in second place was the symbolic gingerbread house and in first place was the Target-inspired gingerbread house.
“We had a lot of teamwork and we came up with a lot of good ideas to make the gingerbread house,” winner Kyla Cretencio ‘28 said. “They had a really good idea about putting the Target dog in the car. We were just trying to be creative about it and we were having fun.”
Being an Outreach Club tradition, the Winter Social and gingerbread house-making contest is an anticipated event every year. It allows members to forge relationships with each other, one of the key goals of Outreach Club.
“Even though we do have some at-school events, I feel like a lot of members don’t get to interact as much,” Oruganti said. “The winter social is one way that everyone gets to see each other and [be] like, ‘this is another person in the club,’ and just [make] new connections.”