SERVICE
IMPACT SERVICE
The PJP Community Service Corps undertook two major service projects this Christmas Season. CSC participated in the annual Kids Helping Kids at Christmas Drive, through which high school students across the Archdiocese provide gifts for children served by Catholic Social Services, and they shopped for gifts for families served by the IHM Family Literacy Center in Coatesville.
For the Kids Helping Kids at Christmas Drive, the PJP High School Community Service Corps received wishlists from 38 children (29 from St. Martin De Porres School in Philadelphia, and nine from St. Edmond’s Home for Children in Rosemont). Every PJP homeroom adopted a child, then the “CSC Elves” in each homeroom collected money, and shopped for their homeroom’s child. Gifts were hand-delivered to the children from St. Martin De Porres and St. Edmond’s home by members of CSC’s Executive Board (Andrew John, Ryan Lynn, and Susannah McHugh) at the Archbishop’s Annual Christmas Benefit for Children at the Sheraton Hotel in Philadelphia on December 19, 2016. The children were overjoyed and deeply grateful for the generosity of the PJP students. As one seven-year-old girl clutched the stuffed dog she received and tears streamed down her face, she told Mr. Moran, “I’ve been wishing for this, and I never thought I’d get it, but I did! I can’t believe I got it!”
Community Service Corps Supports Philadelphia Area Children at Christmas
This is the fifth year that CSC partnered with the IHM Literacy Center in Coatesville to provide Christmas presents for the families served by the IHM Sisters’ educational outreach ministry. Shortly after Thanksgiving every year, Sister Bernadette Hiester, the Center’s Director, sends a list of children and their Christmas wishlists to PJP’s CSC. This year, CSC students, using the money leftover from the Thanksgiving Drive, shopped for and wrapped gifts for forty six families (the most ever). The gifts were delivered to the IHM Family Literacy Center on Thursday December 22 by Mr. Fonde, who volunteered to be Santa’s courier. Parents picked up the gifts from the Center, and the children received them on Christmas morning. For many of the children, the gifts provided by PJP were the only ones they received this Christmas.