The freshman class at Oak Harbor High School is stepping up their charitable efforts and collecting socks.

Each school year, the freshmen participate in two charity drives to benefit the community, and the current one is “Socktober,” a month-long drive which will culminate in donating socks to homeless shelters, local organizations and the Oak Harbor elementary schools.

“Whatever we did, we wanted to keep it local,” said Jerrod Fleury, a freshman advisor and assistant principal at the high school.

Fleury came across the charity online.

The freshman class is divided into “islands,” according to Fleury. Each island competes against the others. The winning island will include the freshmen who brought in the most socks during October, and they will earn spirit points.

“All we ask of kids is to bring in new pairs of socks,” Fleury said.

“This just struck me immediately as something that would be easy for kids to manage,” said Jennifer DePrey, a counselor at the high school helping to organize the charity drive.

Fleury said that the goal is to collect 800 pairs of socks, which averages roughly two pairs per student.

“We know that there’s some kids who’ll bring in five pairs, and some kids that won’t bring in any,” he said.

One week into the drive, the students have collected about 200 pairs of socks.

“We’re right where we want to be to hit that 800 mark,” Fleury said.

DePrey said that having the freshmen do charity drives during the school year is something that has been going on for about four years.

“I think school is also kind of about good citizenship and being involved with your community,” she said.

Past charities have included a coat drive, a teddy bear drive, a toiletry drive and more. They always try to keep the beneficiaries of the drives local.

“It’s a pretty small community,” DePrey said of Oak Harbor. “We rely on each other a lot. It’s great to get our students involved in that community now.”

Socktober is the longest charity drive they’ve done so far, and DePrey said that keeping enthusiasm for it up for so long could be an obstacle.

“I think we’re going to have the challenge of keeping the excitement up and getting people involved,” DePrey said. “I’m really excited to see how it goes.”

DePrey said that anyone could donate socks if they wanted. All they would have to do would be to bring the socks to the high school and tell the front desk that the donation is for the Socktober Charity Drive.

“It’s hopefully something that we can continue and build on,” Fleury said. “It’s early right now, so we’re hoping it’ll pick up and not dwindle.”