Mira Costa students involved with the Giving Spirit Youth Council, the student-run wing of local nonprofit The Giving Spirit, are seeking donations to purchase laptops for homeless teens. 

The Giving Spirit is an organization that provides aid to the homeless by assembling and personally distributing survival kits to those who are living on the streets of Los Angeles.

The Youth Council's latest project is to help provide graduating homeless high school seniors with Chromebooks for the next part of their academic journey, according to Youth Council member and Mira Costa junior Devan Malik.

The Youth Council's pitch explains: "Imagine you are a graduating senior in high school, depending on technology to turn in assignments, contact friends, store important documents for your family, and express yourself creatively. Now imagine you are living in poverty, experiencing housing insecurity, struggling to get enough food, and with no safe or quiet place to study or do homework. However, you have overcome those challenges and are now about to graduate! But imagine that your computer (perhaps the only technology you had) is taken away. Graduating students experiencing homelessness/poverty often have their LAUSD school-issued laptops taken away, erasing years of personal files and memories and leaving them without computer access amid their other struggles. They have a great new horizon in front of them but lack a vital resource."

"LAUSD schools take away school-issued laptops from these students once they graduate, often leaving them without any computer at all and therefore lacking a vital resource to achieve their dreams," said Malik.

Malik, along with Mira Costa senior Katie Segerson, and eight other students from the South Bay are Youth Council members who are leading the drive to fund laptops for those students.

Donations for the laptops may be made by Venmo to @TheGivingSpirit or by scanning the QR code below. 

The Giving Spirit will collaborate with LAUSD to distribute the Chromebooks to graduating seniors. The fundraising drive will run through May 3.

Malik said that he got involved with The Giving Spirit through survival kit packing events, where he became fully engaged in the organization's mission.

"I applied to join the Youth Council as soon as I learned of it," said Malik. "I run a club at Costa with [Segerson] where we educate others on the unhoused crisis and spread awareness for events such as this one."

For questions about the drive, email [email protected].