By: Sarah Wright | C&G Newspapers | Published February 9, 2026
UTICA/STERLING HEIGHTS — Students at Henry Ford II High School have created an initiative to provide laundry supplies to families in need within the Utica Community Schools district.
The laundry supplies project, “Bubbles on Wheels,” was created as a group DECA project through the efforts of Angelina Yaldo and Isabella Vettraino, who are both seniors. DECA formerly stood for the Distributive Education Clubs of America and teaches students about marketing, finance, hospitality and management.
Yaldo and Vettraino took on the project after hearing district wellness consultant Catherine Livingston speak about issues she has seen related to hygiene, specifically in relation to clean clothes among other necessities.
“She came to our school in, I think, September and she just came in talking about the issue of not only hygiene, but more of the detergent aspect of it, and the laundry, because a lot of schools around us are in need of these things, like having loads of laundry done, clean clothes, clean bedsheets, clean towels,” Vettraino said. “Like the everyday necessities that you need to keep moving forward and to feel clean.”
The group is assisting families with laundry pods and educational materials related to social and emotional learning.
“Bubbles on Wheels gets donations of laundry pods, they then contact the principal at the selected school. They find out how many packages are needed, sort out the laundry supplies, put them in bags with little notes and little encouragements, and deliver it to the school,” Livingston said in a press release.
Donations have been collected through detergent drives and school-based events such as basketball or football games, as well as the supplies being given directly to the school.
“So, we raised money and then collected money and detergent funds from our school and then we began, in December, adopting Jack Harvey Elementary, where we donated 30 bags of detergent ranging from 32 to 172 loads for different sizes of families,” Yaldo said. “Bubbles on Wheels aims to deliver 30-plus detergent for each school we adopt while sustaining this last school, so we won’t give up on a school once we deliver once.”
With these donations, the DECA group hopes that it can help kids in need feel more confident in the academic and social aspects of school, if they have clean clothes.
“By providing detergent, supplies, and awareness, we aim to remove a barrier that can affect a child’s confidence, attendance, and overall success in school. We hope to create a more supportive and understanding community by addressing a need that is often overlooked,” Vettraino said in a press release. “By helping families meet basic hygiene needs, Bubbles on Wheels promotes student well-being, strengthens family support, and encourages the community to take part in helping one another. The long-term goal is to ensure that no student is held back due to circumstances outside of their control.”
Bubbles on Wheels has currently received 650 in-kind donations and around $857 in monetary donations, which totals to around 1,500 donations overall. For their next steps, the group hopes to reach out to middle schools and high schools as well as grow their numbers and maybe expand across the state.
“So, our plans are that we want to double or triple our numbers by the next year,” Vettraino said. “So, we started off this three-month trial plan where we adopt just three schools and see how our system would work, and then in the future, one year from now, we plan to double the amount of schools we go to and double our team members, so we get the most help and aid we can along with partnering with grocery stores or detergent companies so that we would have a primary source of detergent, as well as exact numbers, so we would know how much schools we would be able to sustain and how much families we would be able to help and just get exact stats.”
For more information, visit instagram.com/bubblesonwheelss or uticak12.org.