Lincoln-Way East Students Make A Difference One Joyful Gift At A Time

FRANKFORT, IL — Izzy Wagner, like many people, emerged out of the COVID-19 pandemic hoping to find a way to make a difference in the lives of others, even if it meant starting with something small.

So when the Lincoln-Way East High School sophomore was in the midst of her first year of high school last year, she came up with an idea to start a school club designed to bring a smile to the faces of people who, in many cases, were complete strangers.

But at a large high school that has plenty of school clubs to offer Lincoln-Way East students, Wagner realized that if the club wasn’t going to fall through the cracks and get lost in the mix of student activities, it had to set out to do something different. She is now the president of Joyful Gifts, a collection of about 35 students that have set out to bring joy to others and hopefully bring a smile to children who otherwise may not have reason to.

Joyful Gifts recently sent about 90 gift bags of craft items to the pediatric unit at Advocate Children’s Hospital in Oak Lawn. The bags contained items that can be turned into artsy projects and that Wagner and other members of Joyful Gifts hope is just one of many ways Lincoln-Way East students can partner with community groups and organizations to bring happiness to those who are on the receiving end of the club’s efforts.

For Wagner, whose original idea of setting up a pen pal program between high school students and hospitalized kids morphed into the gift bags, knowing she and her fellow students are making a difference is all that matters.

“The best way to make a difference in my mind is to try and put a smile on someone else’s face,” Wagner told Patch on Monday.

Joyful Gifts has received financial support from the Frankfort Fire Foundation and Frankfort Local 4338, which provided a financial boost to get the club up and running. The club has also held food drives and a candy drive that led to 4,000 pieces of candy being collected by Lincoln-Way East students and then distributed to community groups around the area in the form of Halloween gift bags.

While the nature of the Joyful Gifts will change, the mission of the club never wavers. The projects will always go to help the community, which Wagner says remains at the heart of the club’s efforts. In addition to the 25-35 students who typically attend meetings, the Joyful Gifts Club has about 90 followers on Instagram, which considering the club started less than a year ago, brings a smile to the club founder’s face.

At a school that offers so many extra-curricular activities, Wagner said her pitch was simple: A club that is about people helping people. The club, in her mind, wouldn’t involve a major time commitment or a lot of hard work, but instead, was just a simple way of making people smile. The idea has caught on.

“It’s really cool to know that I got to make a difference,” Wagner said. “You see all the kids here at Lincoln-Way East that are getting involved and they’re getting to make a difference, too – and that’s really special.”

She added: “It’s really cool to see how many people care about (the club) and have put in the hard work and devotion into it.”

For Emily Johnson, the club's faculty sponsor, watching students participate in a worthwhile activity that benefits the greater community has proven to be special as well. Considering Wagner was just a freshman when she started the club, she says Joyful Gifts is an example of what can happen when young people set their minds to doing something meaningful for the place where they are growing up.

Johnson marvels at the way that in just her first year at such a large high school, Wagner found her way into a student organization that can be doing good in the community just by doing good at the school level.

“Just her ambition in starting club just shows such a generous heart just that she wants to do this,” Johnson told Patch. “(Wagner) does all the work — she comes up with the ideas, we collaborate on how we’re going to get it done, but her and (club’s) executive board are the ones doing all the work. You can just tell they want to help people.”

She added: “It has to start somewhere, and it has to start with somebody, and this could be the spark that helps to ignite something else to help make the community better.”

Up next is a holiday party for Lincoln-Way East students in which partygoers will pay a little something at the door to get it. The donations, Wagner said, will then be turned over to the hospital to help childhood patients that will be turned over not only in the name of Joyful Gifts but also thanks to Lincoln-Way East’s Student Council.

While the club is still in its infancy, Wagner says Joyful Gifts’ efforts have already gone beyond what she imagined. She hopes it can be a continual effort to not only bring smiles to the faces of others but to make her community better.

“It always makes me smile just to know that hopefully, someone else is also smiling because of something I was able to accomplish,” Wagner said.

She added: “At first, I just thought, ‘Oh, let’s just help some kids smile’ and now we’re kind of reaching throughout the community and helping so many more people than I thought would be possible.”