While most middle school students try to fit school, extra curricular activities, and social time into their daily lives, eighth grade student Sara Clark finds time to do it all, as well as serve the community with her own charity organization.

The charity, called “Knock Your Socks On”, provides new socks for underprivileged children in Las Vegas schools.

“The main purpose of ‘Knock Your Socks On” is to gather new socks for elementary school kids in Nevada who don’t get new socks,” said Clark.

A majority of the socks are collected through donation. “Knock Your Socks On” also has a partnership with an engineering company who collects socks for them. Donations come mostly from people that Clark knows, and they also help with the distributing process. So far, “Knock Your Socks On” has collected a total of 1,163 pairs of socks, with more recent donations not yet counted.

However, Clark always looks for more socks to give, and gladly accepts brand new donations. Any socks for the charity can be given directly to her. Anyone has the ability to help “Knock Your Socks On” by donating socks to Clark, as long as they’re new and unused.

It takes a lot of time and effort to run a charity organization as well as have the normal life of a student. Clark’s mother, Shelia Clark, sees how much her daughter does.

“Sara works so hard as an athlete, musician, and student. The fact that she still wants to do this in what little free-time she has makes me proud as a parent and a human being,” said Mrs. Clark via email.

Clark’s inspiration for “Knock Your Socks On” came from a family friend who teaches at a school where the children have very little. She wanted to provide the kids with something they needed, yet didn’t have. Many other organizations collect shoes, and she wanted to do something different.

“A lot of charities do shoes, but nobody does socks; nobody gives them socks to try on their shoes with,” said Clark.

Clark said her favorite part about running the organization is getting to see the kids’ faces when they receive their new socks. She said they have so much joy and excitement when they accept their gift, but they still act selflessly.

Clark also said that almost every kid from one school they visited sent her cards. They thanked her for their socks, which was the first pair for many of them.

“[The cards were] really heartbreaking because a lot of them said that this was the first pair of socks they had ever gotten brand new before,” said Clark.

Clark hopes to expand “Knock Your Socks On” in the future. She’s currently working on legalizing the organization as an official charity. She’s also trying to reach out to more schools in Las Vegas to give them socks.

Clark never imagined how much her organization was capable of until now.

“I thought we would do it one year and that was it, but a bunch of schools have asked us to give socks for their schools because they need socks too,” said Clark.

To see a pdf version of this story, please click the following link: Sara Clark Feature PDF