After two months of hard work, students from St. John and Holy Trinity Catholic schools are gaining first-hand experience giving back to the community.
On Monday, Grade 2 and Grade 6 students from St. John and Grade 8 students from Holy Trinity spent the morning filling backpacks with donated items they’ve been collecting for the past two months, and baking enough food to feed 150 people at Royal City Mission.
Part of a leadership class, the two schools joined forces to help students understand the struggles some community members experience with accessing basic needs.
In total, around 170 care packages with socks, scarves, toothpaste, toothbrushes, hygiene products, hand warmers and snacks will be donated Tuesday to The Bench, a Downtown Guelph street program for marginalized individuals, along with some extra loose items.
The students also made artistic tags and hand-drawn cards to give with the backpacks.
“There are people in our community who benefit greatly from these items that people often take for granted,” said Tyler Parkinson, a Grade 6 teacher at St. John.
“The other day we were talking about when you wake up or go to bed and brush your teeth, you don’t think, ‘I’m so thankful that I have this toothbrush,’ right? But there are people within our own community who don’t have that.”
He said the goal was to teach students to “use their gifts for the good of our own community.”
This was met with a lot of enthusiasm from students – so much that they decided to add another element: making food for Royal City Mission.
While they baked the cookies and cupcakes Monday, Tuesday morning they will decorate the cupcakes and make pizza to drop off at Royal City Mission later in the day, before dropping the backpacks off at The Bench.
For Grade 2 student Everett, the experience was a "fun and exciting" one that left him feeling good. Likewise, Grade 2 student Owen said it made him happy “to help people who don’t have homes.”
Moving forward, both said they plan to keep helping people.
Much like the children, staff said they hope other schools will be inspired by their efforts and embark on their own projects to give back to the community.
