North Stonington — Nine freshmen and sophomore girls at Wheeler High School are headed to Myrtle Beach, S.C., at the end of the month to join the Hurricane Florence relief effort.

From Oct. 25 to 31, while their peers are in classes, they’ll be shoveling mud out of homes, removing water-logged sheet rock and pulling out personal belongings.

“I think it’s going to humble us a lot, to see what they go through,” sophomore Abby Primett said.

The students going are members of the school’s Interact-Give Back Club. The Give Back Club has been at the school for four years, while Interact — sponsored by the Rotary — began this year.

Primett went to a Rotary Youth Leadership Awards conference and helped found the Interact club at Wheeler. The South Carolina trip will be her first flight.

Her mother, Jessica Primett, is a little nervous, but she’s telling herself to “trust God, because they’re doing his work by helping others.”

This trip follows one last year in which a group of seniors went to Houston, Texas, for hurricane relief efforts, through the Christian humanitarian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse.

“Our kids from Wheeler knocked it out of the park last year, they’re unbelievable, so we have a really good reputation with the organization now,” said Rebecca Schilke, who co-advises the Interact-Give Back Club with science teacher Rebecca Costello.

She added, “I feel very strongly that we really owe it to our seniors to help them see beyond the community where they live.”

Two others who went on the trip last year are joining this year as chaperones: Schilke’s daughter Rachel, a college junior, and Kelsey MarcAurele, who went on the trip last year as a senior.

MarcAurele said the Texas trip came about after years of “bugging” Schilke to go somewhere for disaster relief.

“I think tropical storms are really interesting,” she said. “They happen where everyone’s watching, and they stop and everyone stops watching, but the pain is still happening.” So, she wanted to be paying attention when it was needed most.

Rachel Schilke said aside from the Wheeler group, helpers last year were mostly locals who would take off work to volunteer for the day.

Both last year and this year, planning the trip was a whirlwind, considering one does not know before a hurricane where help ultimately will be the most needed.

The students will be sleeping on the floor of Socastee Baptist Church in Myrtle Beach. They were asked to pay for their flights, so then set about doing some fundraising, including selling “Hope Changes Everything” T-shirts.

e.moser@theday.com