Every year, Valley’s National Honor’s Society (NHS) hosts Safe Night Halloween for all kids in the community to attend for a night full of fun, but safe, Halloween activities. This year, it will be held Oct. 30 from 5:45-7:15 p.m.
Though it’s run by NHS, all Valley clubs are welcome to sign up to have a booth for kids to visit around the hallways of the school.
“Safe Night Halloween is a Halloween event put on by all of the Loudoun Valley clubs within our school,” SCA President Sienna Dhillon said. “We create a fun Halloween event that’s meant to be safer than the actual Halloween, where kids from all around the community are able to come and do different Halloween activities, trick or treat, color, sing and just have a fun Halloween event for all.”
For NHS, the event requires quite a bit of preparation to ensure everything runs smoothly for both attendees and participating clubs.
“NHS invites all Loudoun Valley clubs, teams and organizations to participate in the event,” NHS adviser Heidi Trude said. “Interested club leaders and sponsors complete a Google Form to sign up for the event. On the form, they detail what activity they are planning for the event and any additional needs they might have. The NHS Board takes the information from the clubs and creates the room assignments.”
In addition to the difficulties of ensuring other clubs sign up, the most difficult aspect of preparation for NHS members is making sure there are sufficient supplies for the amount of attendees.
“Just making sure we have enough of everything, making sure we have enough candy, enough decorations and then designating rooms for everyone is tricky too,” NHS Leadership Chair Saoirse Strayhorne said. “But once we have everyone signed up, and then we get our NHS members to donate, it gets easier.”
This difficulty is amplified when it’s unclear what the attendance of the event will look like.
“The most difficult part in preparing for Safe Night Halloween is not knowing how many children and their families will attend the event,” Trude said. “We advertise to all the local elementary schools, as well as posting it on the local social media groups.”
For Dhillon, coordinating with other clubs can be a sticking point for SCA.
“I think the most difficult part of preparing and putting on the event is ensuring that everyone has a task and a job,” Dhillon said. “And that we’re coordinating with all the different clubs to make sure all the different clubs are not doing the same thing, and that all the different clubs know exactly what we’re doing in order to put on a successful event.”
As Dhillon noted, it’s important for all the clubs to have a variety of activities for the attendees to participate in.
“LVSI’s [Loudoun Valley Service Initiative] booth usually contains a sign and a few games inside the classroom, like cornhole and simple interactive games too for the kids,” LVSI officer Addie Willits said. “We usually make decorations and hang the handmade decorations on the walls in the door to make it more fun. Then we hang out for a bit and then wait for the kids to come by and hand out candy.”
SCA is always stationed in the Mixing Bowl for Safe Night Halloween, so they have room to set up some more extensive entertainment, notably corn hole.
“So when we do Safe Night Halloween, we want to make sure that we have really fun activities for the kids to participate in,” Dhillon said. “We are always in the Mixing Bowl, so we grab our corn hole, we grab all our different games and we ensure that each member dresses up to fit the Halloween spirit. And we also give out candy and make sure that each of the SCA members are interacting with the kids to have such an amazing time.”
As hosts for Safe Night, NHS members’ main duty when participating in the actual event is to decorate the school.
“On the night of Safe Night Halloween, the NHS members decorate the hallways with decorations, while the individual clubs decorate their assigned rooms,” Trude said. “Afterwards, all clubs help in cleaning up.”
In addition to focusing on how smooth the event will run, all club members emphasize the vitality of Safe Night Halloween for the community.
“I think the event is very beneficial to the community because it brings the community together and allows for another fun and spooky night with the kids,” Willits said. “That’s very interactive and exciting for the families. It also gives the parents a break.”
This sentiment is also shared by NHS.
“By offering Safe Night Halloween to our community, we are fulfilling a community need and bringing smiles and joy to so many in our town,” Trude said.
