Shelves are being stocked, people are coming in and store owners with lots of different businesses such as clothing, food or decorations are lined up to offer customers their products, including a silent auction with the chance to win items such as a snoopy and woodstock custom plushie.

On Nov. 16, Project Graduation hosted the annual Holiday Bazaar to help fund their end-of-year event. There were food trucks out in the parking lot, a silent auction outside the cafeteria and booths with various products inside the building. “I started helping out recently a couple of months ago,” Holiday Bazaar director Brooke Holmes said. “We ended up with 60 vendors [including] the silent auction and bake sale.”

Holmes was in charge of setting up the event and greeting people as they entered.

“It’s just a lot of coordination,” Holmes said, “I try to make sure that all the vendors have what they need.”

Alongside the coordinators were student volunteers, who were in charge of overseeing the silent auction and cleaning up after the event.

“They’re not gonna steal anything on my watch,” junior Tyler Hunsperger said. “ [If they stole something] I would say ‘stop it right now!’and chase after them like in Subway Surfers.”

According to Huspenger, one of the biggest challenges he faced during the event was boredom due to the long hours; however, he found the event to be very rewarding.

“Everyone should have some sort of volunteer experience at some point,” Huspenger said. “Not only can it be fun, but you’ll get things that you never knew would come out of volunteering. I made a friend today that I didn’t think I would.”

One of the vendors who sold baked goods was Jenny Smith, who sold homemade cookies with her daughter from her business called Dr. J’s cookies. It was her third year of working with Project Grad.

“[It’s fun to] meet all the other vendors and see the other folks in the community,” Smith said. “My daughter was a Celebrity, and so all the celeb moms would come and find me. We’ll have to see who shows up because they keep graduating.”

One of the clothing vendors was Ashley Alizor, who ran an eclectic art business.

“I sell fashion on one side,” Alizor said. “Everything is handmade, and it’s cut up from old jeans. People know I do that so I have bags of clothes that people give me of different shapes and sizes.”

Project graduation plans to continue hosting holiday bazaars and many more events for the senior class of 2027.

“It’s been a great experience,” Holmes said. “It’s fun to help out, my daughter is a senior so I’m happy to help out with project graduation.”