Walking into a retirement home on a Sunday morning, visitors do not expect to see a group of high school students playing board games with the residents. However, that is exactly what senior Reese Thomas, president and founder of Connect More, started at North. This volunteer-based club allows students to spend time and connect with senior residents over a relaxing game of “Connect Four,” and just recently, the club has expanded across the country.

Thomas originally got the idea to form Connect More from her family’s annual “Connect Four” tournament. Playing with extended family that she did not see often inspired Thomas to bring this game to others in the community.

“I thought it’d be just a great way to connect with people, because I know people in retirement homes don’t get many visitors; … some people either don’t have family at all, or they have family who lives far,” said Thomas. “I just thought it was a really good way to just sit down and have conversation with people while playing the game, because ‘Connect Four’ is a really easy game to just kind of leisurely play.”

Thomas has been interested in expanding Connect More for a while, but she did not actually begin to do so until this past summer due to the challenges that come with reaching out to other schools.

“I knew that I’d been wanting to expand to more schools, but I just always thought that I had to have a personal connection to a different school, and I had to find one person who was willing to start it,” said Thomas. “It was just pretty difficult, because it takes a lot out of a person to start and run a club.”

Despite her doubts, Thomas began posting on social media to reach a wide network of high schoolers who might be interested in spreading Connect More.

“Eventually, I made a TikTok account for it, and I kind of posted a video targeting high school students who were motivated and looking for ways to get involved and who had initiative to start something like this,” said Thomas. “I just made a kind of a slideshow TikTok, where it just said, ‘Are you this type of person? Do you like to volunteer and connect with people? Are you looking for ways to stand out in your school?’”

Thomas posted the TikTok in the hopes of reaching other schools and students, but she had no idea how much of an impact her single video would have.

“I woke up and the video had 70,000 views, and I had hundreds of people DMing me saying that they were interested in starting it at their school, and I had no clue that [the TikTok] was gonna do anything like that,” said Thomas.

After receiving so many messages from interested students, Thomas created a Google Classroom where she posted materials to help students across the country bring Connect More to their schools.

“The Google Classroom got so full because you can only have a max of 250 people,” said Thomas. “We filled up a whole Google Classroom [and] we had to make another one with the same materials, but that’s just how many people we had, which was great.”

The Google Classroom encompasses a wide range of students, reaching schools across the country that are interested in starting their own Connect More club.

“At the moment, we’re in over 35 states, and we’re in Puerto Rico, we’re in Alaska,” said Thomas. “And then, other than that, it’s just states all across the country, and a lot of them have multiple schools in one state.”

Thomas recognizes that giving high school students the opportunity to connect with senior residents has made a significant impact.

“You just see the smile on these people’s faces, and you know that you’re making such an impact on them, which has such a great impact on you, too. I think that it impacts the members that go just as much as the residents,” said Thomas. “It just makes [the residents] so happy and gets them really excited.”

This story was originally published on Stargazer on September 26, 2025.