Catholic Schools Week service project has students and alumni pack 15,000 meals for distribution at Port Huron-area food bank
RICHMOND — Students and alumni at St. Augustine School in Richmond prepared 15,000 dry meals for a local food pantry as part of a Catholic Schools Week service project Jan. 28.
Students at the K-8 school, along with St. Augustine alumni who are attending Cardinal Mooney High School in Marine City and Austin Catholic High School in Chesterfield Township, worked at tables in the school basement, filling, sealing and stacking bags of dry food for distribution.
The school partnered with Kids Against Hunger for the third year running, and for the second year, the food will be distributed to the Blue Water Community Food Depot in Port Huron.
“This is the third year we have done this,” Emily Lenn, principal at St. Augustine School told Detroit Catholic. “The first, we sent the meals north to an Indian reservation in Burt Lake, and then last year we chose to help people right around the corner in the Blue Water community.”
After a quick prayer, blessing the food and all who will receive it, students from all grades worked side by side, pouring portions of rice, soy, vegetables and chicken-flavored vitamins into sealed bags that were packed away into boxes for shipping.
The older students taught the younger students, while the preschoolers decorated the boxes with crayons.
“We’re celebrating what we can do with our hands and feet as the hands and feet of Jesus,” Lenn said. “What I really love about this project is how everyone is getting involved. The kids really take charge and organize the work, we have alumni coming back to St. A’s and working with our current students. We have parents involved in delivering the boxes of food to the pantry. Even the preschoolers are getting involved coloring the boxes that the meals are being placed in. So every single person in this building is involved in one way.”
Todd Clevenger, Michigan director for Kids Against Hunger, was on hand to teach the students how to organize and pack the meals.
“Days like today are great because the kids really get something out of it; you see them running around, working so diligently, really getting after it,” Clevenger said. “Today, they are doing 15,000 adult meals, which equates to 30,000 children’s meals.
“All of it is going to the local community,” Clevenger added. “The school decided to donate the food locally, so by the end of the day, all of this food will be at the Blue Water Community Food Depot, ready to be given to people.”
For Lenn, Catholic Schools Week is an opportunity each year to celebrate what makes St. Augustine, and other Catholic schools throughout the Archdiocese of Detroit, special. And service projects like the one today are just as important as the lessons students will learn in the classroom or at Mass, she said.
“We're always looking for a service project to do, and we want to help people in need. One of the corporal works of mercy is to feed the hungry, and so this ties right in with that and what we believe in our Catholic faith,” Lenn said. “Our students' enthusiasm for helping others shows they have taken in why our school exists: to be the hands and feet of Jesus.”
