Say No to Snow is a joint project between Carmel Mayor’s Youth Council (CMYC) and Key Club to shovel snow in the residential area around CHS after school during the winter.

CMYC president Jack Langston ‘14 said, “Originally, the project started when a couple of community members approached us and told us that they saw the roads near the high school were unsafe for students to walk on when they went to and from the school.”

“The city of Carmel has certain snow plows that plow the snow from the street directly onto the sidewalks,” Matt Klineman, CMYC officer and junior, said. These snow blowers push up to three inches of snow onto the sidewalks, which forces students to walk on icy roads in the dark.

After further inquiries, CMYC discovered that most of the residents in that area were over the age of 60 and could not shovel their own sidewalks. When it snows in the winter, the members of the program hope to have 10 different volunteers shovel the sidewalks of about 40 houses for one to two hours after school. Residents who want to participate will receive a phone call the day before expected snow fall reminding them to put their shovels outside.

Both CMYC and Key Club hope to have between 75 to 100 total volunteers signed up. Volunteers can sign up using SignUpGenius or through CMYC’s website, cmycouncil.com. There, they can identify how many times they would like to participate after school. They will be put into a database, and one member of CMYC will be chosen to monitor the weather for expected snowfall. Three days before it is expected to snow, he will have the database randomly generate names until 10 people are able to help on the specified day.

Langston said volunteers would meet in the Freshman Center before heading out to shovel.

“It’s not really for a specific amount of time; usually we say it should be around an hour or two hours. After they do that, they can be taken out of the database, or they can be put back into the cycle,” Langston said.

Because the job is so big, the members of CMYC decided to reach out to Key Club.

Joe Philleo, secretary of Key Club, CMYC member and sophomore said, “This project, while a great idea, simply requires too much manpower for the 30 or so members of CMYC. Key Club, with its large pool of members, focuses on projects like Say No to Snow which are community-oriented so this was a very natural partnership.”

Key Club members will receive group hours for their participation, and while CMYC members will not be the only volunteers, they might be required to shovel a certain number of times each winter.

Klineman said, “The beauty of the system is that it is really flexible.”