I recently interviewed Sara Paprocki, who is a high school representive. She talked to me about the Winter Wear Project, which took place in 2025 and January 12 to 23, 2026. This article will go over what the Winter Wear Project is exactly, who it helps, and why it’s important.
In our interview, Sara explained that JSLB, which ran the Winter Wear Project, is a student group of high-school representatives. There is one representative per high school. The group comes together to, as Sara stated, “share our Jeffco experiences and help make decisions to change Jeffco for the better.” This made me very intrigued as to how Sara got into this group. Sara explained that she became involved because she noticed virtual students are often overlooked, saying, “I got into this area of helping people because I know that virtual usually isn’t thought about, and when I got the opportunity, I figured why not just jump on and add my two cents.” She is an extremely inspiring person for taking an opportunity like that.
When asked what the Winter Wear Project is exactly, Sara said, “The Winter Wear Project is where we gather participants (In the form of Jeffco elementary, middle, and high schoolers) to donate old winter clothing for families in need. Last year, we helped over 2,000 families!” This impressive number makes me wonder how many families will be helped this year! As Sara said, “Families could always use more winter clothing; the cold is unpredictable, and it sucks to be caught off guard.”
Many people don’t understand how important projects like this are. 1 in 318 people in Colorado are homeless, which makes winters not just hard, but nearly impossible without winter clothing. While this ratio may Colorado has a population of 5.96 million, which means, based on this ratio, there are around 18,750 homeless people in Colorado.
This truly means the Winter Wear Project is extremely important to have happen, even if it’s only for 14 days. Any impact from this is good!
