Home / News & Publications / Michigan Catholic News / 2008 / St. Damian students answer the call to stock local food bank
St. Damian students answer the call to stock local food bank
by Joe Kohn of The Michigan Catholic
Published December 26, 2008
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Joe Kohn | The Michigan Catholic
First-grade students from St. Damian School in Westland stand in front of a giant stack of food and necessities they helped purchase for visitors to St. Mary's Outreach Center in Wayne. Learning that pantry was perilously low on items, the K-8 school raised $1,200. |
Westland — While many students use "extra credit" assignments to help their grades, at St. Damian School in Westland students used such an assignment to help their neighbors instead.
Upon learning that St. Mary's Outreach Center in Wayne was running low on food, and that the need was only growing, St. Damian students held an impromptu fundraiser that helped them buy more than $1,200 worth of food for the St. Mary's pantry. "It has to do with Jesus because he teached us that when they need food, to give them food," said first-grader Sophia Ohland, standing with her classmates last week next to a stack of canned and boxed food that reached well over their heads. St. Damian maintenance director Tim Hoste sparked the fundraiser when he heard about St. Mary's shortage. Being the food pantry that local parishes collect goods for each month, St. Mary's regularly made pickups from the school and parish. "One of the guys commented on how absolutely low the pantry was on everything, as well as the fact that the number of people seeking food had tripled," said Hoste. "I thought this was something we could help with here, and the principal (Mary Stempin) said 'Yes, we could absolutely do that.'"
The fundraiser began the week before Thanksgiving. Hoste promised that he would treat the class who raised the most money to a pizza party when the fundraiser ended, just before Christmas break. Each day, he would bring a plastic container to the classrooms for student donations.
The students made sure the Lord's words in the 11th chapter of Luke's Gospel, "Ask and you will receive," rang as true as can be.
"When I first put this together, I was expecting maybe $300," Hoste said. "And to get $1,200-plus dollars was above and beyond.
"Everybody really took in the idea of helping out, and they liked competing against each other's classrooms, but they also really liked seeing how much they could get."
The first-grade class alone met Hoste's initial expectations, raising about $300. Students from the class said they just wanted others to have the necessities that they do each day.
"We want them to have the same amount of food that we have here," said first-grader Brendan Morell. "We have more food than them, so that's why we collected all this money."
Although this year's fundraiser for the St. Mary's Outreach Center was a spur-of-the-moment addition to the school's regular collections for charity, Hoste says its success is something St. Damian School might be able to build on.
"I'm hoping this is something we could continue on with every year," he said, "because of how well it wound up working."
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