Two young parishioners pitched a service project to Sacred Heart to build beds for children in need
GROSSE ILE ─ It was on a rainy morning on Saturday, May 23, at Sacred Heart Parish in Grosse Ile, where parishioners came together to make sure children could get a good night’s sleep.
Eighty-five parishioners worked like clockwork, cutting pieces of wood, assembling bed frames, applying nails and screws in their proper place inside the parish social hall.
The project is part of Sleep in Heavenly Peace, a nonprofit that organizes bed builds for children in Wayne and Monroe counties who lack beds.
The idea for the bed build came from two young Sacred Heart parishioners, Noah Booker and Connor O’Donnell, both sophomores at Grosse Ile High School.
“Today we are doing a bed build with about 80 people; we’re constructing the beds, making slats and cutting some wood today,” Booker told Detroit Catholic.
Booker and O’Donnell worked together to submit a grant to the Grosse Ile Education Foundation to secure $5,000 to purchase all the supplies the parish would need to build the beds, with the expertise of Sleep in Heavenly Peace staff and volunteers.
“Sleep in Heavenly Peace is a nonprofit organization that builds beds for kids who don’t have them,” O’Donnell said. "They collect the wood to build the beds and deliver them to the families who sign up for a bed. For us, it’s an amazing experience in building beds for kids who need beds.”
Booker and O’Donnell participated in previous bed builds and knew they wanted to bring it to their community.
“We talked with our youth group leader, Mrs. Donna, and we applied for a grant with the Grosse Ile Education Foundation, which awarded us a grant to cover the entire costs of the build,” O’Donnell said. “All of the volunteers today are from Grosse Ile; it means a lot because it shows that we can do something together and create a really good cause as a community.”
Donna Plegue, the volunteer youth minister at Sacred Heart, was pleased when Booker and O’Donnell approached her about the parish hosting a bed build.
"These two boys have really taken charge of this, and they’re just so excited about it, and they love to serve people, and actually, our whole youth group loves to serve people,” Plegue said. “Our church community really loves to serve as well, and this is a new opportunity for us to get involved.”
In addition to building the beds, the Sacred Heart community will deliver them to children in need, along with bed bags containing pillows, sheets and a comforter.
“I was really surprised about how many children across the nation lack a bed,” Plegue said. “There are 140,000 children who don’t have beds, and you don’t ever hear about that. You hear about food and diapers, but you never hear about children needing beds. I’m so glad we did this as a community and hope we do it every year.”
