Coast moms team up with Goodwill to honor the class of 2020

For many, graduation is a time of celebrating accomplishments, milestones, and achievements, but in the light of the COVID-19 pandemic, seniors throughout the country are missing the reward to those years of hard work.

Gulfport High Senior Janilyah Khadaran said, “Graduation, that was like the end for me. It’s the last thing in my chapter and now it’s not the last thing so nothing feels right.” Thanks to two moms, seniors throughout the Coast are receiving recognition in a special way. “My mom made the group. She wants to do all these things because I was in a lot of stuff in high school. It was all coming to an end and I was proud of it and it’s like it all went away really fast. I didn’t have anything so she wants to do a parade. She wants to do a party. She wants us to have everything that we wanted to do, she wants to do it for me.”

The group is called Seniors of 2020. They partnered with Goodwill to create senior signs to place up and down Highway 49, something Harrison Central Senior Marvin Miller says means the world to him. “It was a very unexpected chain of events but it kind of caught us off guard. It caught everybody off guard but we’re just handling it the best way we can. We are very appreciative of it because the way the situation happened, the way it caught us off guard, it felt like all those years of high school like there was no rewards. But the efforts that they’re making it stands out to us and we are appreciative of it”

Goodwill Development Officer Kimberly Hall says partnering with these passionate parents was a no-brainer. “These are our future leaders and because some of them may not be having graduations or graduations are delayed we thought what a cool opportunity so the whole community can enjoy and celebrate our seniors because they are deserving and they’re worthy.”

“I love that she did all this for me and that she did all this for everybody else because not a lot of people had this. It’s not the same but at least it’s something.”