National Honor Society (NHS) is composed of 114 high achieving students who are dedicated to serving the community. The Noblesville chapter of NHS has logged nearly 1300 service hours and 600 tutoring hours this year, according to Kim Lewchanin, English teacher and NHS sponsor.

NHS is largely organized by student leaders, who oversee service and tutoring opportunities.

“Ms. Dwyer and I co-sponsor NHS. Essentially, our role is to facilitate the workings of the group. While we offer advice and suggestions, this is a very student-centered organization,” Lewchanin said. “We have a very capable team of officers who have done an excellent job of leading this group of 114 students.”

Senior Camryn Barnett is the current president of NHS.

“My main duties are service oriented,” Barnett said. “The Vice President takes care of tutoring, and I focus on the service projects.”

NHS has worked on several projects this year, including blanket making, partaking in the canned food drive, and visiting Riverwalk Village to help residents make Christmas cards and decorate cookies.

“The largest [project] we’ve done is the blanket making project. We had to go and buy the fabric, and we worked with two different organizations to find a place to donate them,” Barnett said. “We also had to organize times to have people come and make [the blankets] during AL, and we had to work with teachers also to have room to make them.”

The students who volunteered made a total of thirty blankets for two different organizations.

“Twelve of the blankets went to the Megan S. Ott Foundation for breast cancer patients,” Barnett said. “And the other eighteen went to Food 4 Souls, which works with a homeless shelter in Indianapolis.”

The canned food drive was organized by student government, which approached other clubs like NHS asking to help donate. According to Barnett, $250 was offered to the club who collected the most cans.

“Key club won that,” Barnett said. “But it was still really fun to be able to help.”

This month, several students in NHS traveled to Riverwalk Village to spend time with the residents.

“Our Christmas party at the nursing home brought smiles to many of the elderly residents there,” Lewchanin said. “It was heartwarming to see our NHS seniors interacting with a different kind of senior.

NHS has four pillars of belief: scholarship, leadership, character, and service.

“My favorite one is the service pillar,” Barnett said. “Since we are focused on helping people, we make an impact on our community just by jumping in wherever help is needed.”

The service opportunities students work on do not just benefit the community, they also benefit the student volunteers.

“[The officers] are learning skills like organization and responsibility, and just how to run something with over a hundred members,” Barnett said. “And the members are learning the value of giving back.”

According to Lewchanin, the student volunteers find satisfaction in volunteering.

“Serving others less fortunate leaves a mark–a significant mark. Something that we can look back on and know that for one moment we made a difference in someone’s life,” Lewchanin said. “I think National Honor Society members get that.”

Gallery • 5 Photos

Photo by Photos provided by Camryn Barnett

Seniors Haley Gunderson, Katie Janosky, and Shelby Tyler pose with their completed blanket.