Kids FACE, We Care are cool clubs

Thanks for Stephanie Bertholdo's article about the Willow Elementary club, Kids For a Clean Environment (Kids FACE). I was in Kids FACE during fourth and fifth grade and had a lot of fun listening to lunchtime speakers talk about interesting environmental projects.

I especially liked "Worm Guy" (aka Curtis Thomsen) from L.A. County's Public Works Department. He brought his worm compost bin with creepy crawlers that ate our lunch leftovers. I also had fun making posters for our cloth grocery bag project. The recycling team collected CRVs every month and donated the money to Kids FACE. I learned I could make good money collecting recyclables.

There is also another Willow club called We Care. They help disadvantaged families with clothing, toys and food drives. They also do fun lunchtime projects like make sock puppets and sack lunches for homeless kids and their families.

Kids FACE and We Care were eliminated as PFA committees because they did not do fundraising events for the school. The parent volunteers that helped lead Kids FACE and We Care meetings were not invited to PFA volunteer appreciation events, but Principal Gary Galvan would personally convey his appreciation to them.

Now I want to publicly express my gratitude to Kids FACE and We Care parent volunteers for being awesome community service role models. So thank you to past parent leaders Brenda Barton-LeMay and Rebecca Arvizu (my mom), as well as Stephanie Bluestein (We Care) and this year's Kids FACE parent leaders Ladan Ghovanto, Janice Dingman and Lauren Smith, who does double duty on recycling with Paula Hoholick.

Finally, a big thank you to teacher Maura Lucus, who let us eat lunch in her classroom during Kids FACE meetings and helped schedule field trips. Willow kids are the luckiest, thanks to these great ladies. Josh Houserman Agoura Hills