It's cool she cares

Brianna Moss’s Facebook page reads like a humanitarian-focused magazine.

There are pleas for helping puppies in Cuba and articles about the “silent extinction” of wild giraffes in Africa.

She is a girl who wears her passions quite publicly, and that makes her most recent effort in Manatee County no surprise to her friends.

A youth ambassador for Goodwill Manasota, the 17-year-old Braden River High School senior has launched a challenge for her fellow high school students. She wants them to go through their stuff and donate to Goodwill.

She is spearheading her “Be Cool School Challenge” campaign, which is an effort to collect unwanted items at area high schools. The collections then can be sold in Goodwill’s retail stores and help support the nonprofit’s mission of changing lives through employment.

“It’s a great way for teenagers to get involved,” Moss said. “Reduce, reuse, recycle.”

Goodwill provides donation boxes that can be painted or decorated any way students like. Then, students promote and hold a donation drive, collecting items such as clothing, shoes and books. Goodwill will pick up the donations on a specific date.

Each student who takes the challenge will receive a coupon for a free pizza slice from Pizza SRQ. The school that collects the most donations will win a free pizza party and $1,000 scholarship, thanks to sponsor Cool Today.

The efforts will be ongoing through April 21 and Moss is determined to see more involvement.

She began interning at Goodwill Manasota’s corporate office in April 2016 and spent many of her summer hours there in the marketing office when she wasn’t busy working as a cashier at BJ’s Wholesale Club, in Sarasota. While cutting out newspaper clippings, she read that Goodwill keeps 41,000 pounds of materials out of landfills.

“As she was learning, she was soaking it up,” said Veronica Miller, vice president of the Goodwill Manasota Foundation. “She wanted to do something. I said, ‘Then, do something.’”

The “Be Cool” campaign emerged. Moss joined Goodwill staff in approaching Cool Today, a local air conditioning, plumbing and electrical service company, and SRQ Pizza as sponsors for her idea. The youths used her certification in the InDesign program to design the brochure for it and helped with other marketing efforts. She even wrote letters about the program to all Manatee County’s high school principals.

Moss said she hopes to get Braden River’s newly created Environmental Club, as well as other schools’ Key Club programs, to help spearhead collections.

She said her experience has been “amazing,” and should help her future goal to have a career in marketing. “Cause” marketing, as Miller calls it, might just be Moss’s niche.

“She’s one exceptional kid,” Miller said. “Every year, one rises up out of the bunch. We need more people who can see that it does take just one person and one act to make the world a different place.”

Moss sees her role as just that and hopes the “Be Cool” program will help the planet while also educating the community about Goodwill’s services.

“Since I’m part of the planet, I should be taking care of it as much as I’m taking care of myself,” Moss said.