By Father Mike Rieder, chaplain at Mercy-McGann High School in New York and CFCA preacher
A group of students and I are going on a special mission awareness trip in August to El Salvador. We plan to help build a house in a small Salvadoran community, so we want to raise money to cover the costs, but we want the activity to be meaningful.
We have a "walk with the poor" bulletin board with the footprints of the students who are going on the trip. On Ash Wednesday, we invited all the students to join us in our walk by letting us serve them. We worked in the cafeteria shining shoes as a sign of solidarity with children who have to work instead of going to school. Each person who got their shoes shined put their name on a little footprint that is now on that same bulletin board. This way, they are walking with us when we go to El Salvador.
The coolest part of the day was that a lot of kids wanted to join in the action. Students at the junior high want to keep shining shoes, and some are talking about doing it in their parishes. We have a little way to go to raise all the money we want to raise, but hearts are being touched (by way of feet!).
Tuesday, April 7, 2009
Touching hearts by way of feet
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1 comment:
How cool is that!! Youth have a great advantage in having all that energy - think of fundraising as a way to "bottle that energy" and sell the product to help your sponsored people! We have had success with a fifth grade class raising money through carpentry projects in the past, making birdhouses or desktop bookshelves or birdfeeders (different projects different years) and selling them after Masses to raise money for missions and for local projects. Plus it is a great way to have the adults interact with the youth - admiring the finished products, asking them about the building and painting, etc. Your shoe polishing sounds super (especially as I usually need mine polished, but never think about doing it!) Keep up the great efforts!
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