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St. Joseph Catholic School - faith, academics and service.
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NEWSFLASH

November 22, 2016

Dear St. Joseph Catholic School Parents,

Once again this year, St. Joseph Parish will host Project Homeless Connect on the fourth Thursday in January. This is a national day of care for the homeless that provides services for individuals and families who live in poverty. Our parish has hosted this event for the last several years as a way to answer our Catholic call to help those in need.

Service providers will gather in the Parish Hall on Thursday, January 26th, and provide opportunities for dental and health care, haircuts, meetings with social service providers, and other services that people who live in poverty cannot typically afford.

Because the fourth Thursday of January across the nation is set aside to promote solidarity with the homeless and those who seek to provide them support, this event falls on a school day each year. We understand that this poses special challenges and opportunities for our community.

The challenges we have faced over the last couple of years have been both practical and philosophical. The philosophical challenges have revolved around the wisdom of holding this event on a school day when our children are on the school campus and homeless people are nearby, next door in the Parish Hall, and in the parking lot. Some parents have shared that they feel that hosting the event at St. Joseph places their children at risk.

We have addressed this concern for this year by working more closely with event organizers to provide more volunteer support throughout the day. School and parish volunteers will work closely with event volunteers. We will have adults welcoming the event’s guests at two different locations – the driveway that leads to the Parish/School parking lot and at the entrance to the Parish Hall. We will also have volunteers in the parking lots and at different locations around the perimeter of the school in order to provide additional supervision. Additionally we will continue to ensure that there is no unsupervised interaction between those who come to receive services and our students.

Throughout the years of hosting Project Homeless Connect, our eighth graders have served lunch for our guests and have found it to be a very rich experience. This is one opportunity we have taken advantage of on this day and one that we plan to continue to provide to our eighth grade students. This experience of being present with and serving those in need in our community brings our teaching of the Catholic faith alive for our students and allows them to put their faith into action.

We have also faced some logistical challenges each year. The School Commission, PTO, and individual parents have been helpful in pointing out the challenges and suggesting solutions. Those challenges have often been around drop-off at the beginning of the school day. This year service providers will load and unload from the back of the Parish Hall in the parking area off of Highland Drive. We are also working with event organizers to help with sharing information with volunteers and providers about parking on Andresen Road and Highland Drive. The additional volunteer support we’ll have in place will help facilitate traffic flow at drop off and provide security throughout the school day.

In the weeks leading up to Project Homeless Connect, we will be on the lookout for volunteers. We will also be sharing some more logistical details about the day. These volunteer requests and details will be shared in the weekly Cardinal Call email messages distributed to school families.

We are grateful for the input we have received from parents to help us improve this day of service to those who are in need among us. In addition to the challenges that this day provides, we have heard from many parents how grateful they are for this opportunity to show our students how we put the Gospel into action here at St. Joseph. Once again this year we will spend some time in the classroom reflecting on this event and what it means to the people we serve, and to those of us who have the privilege of hosting them. We hope that days like January 26th will continue to inspire in our community the desire to live in Christ’s spirit and to be people for others.

As we look forward to the coming days of Thanksgiving, Advent, and the Christmas Season, we wish you abundant blessings.

Peace,

Fr. Gary Lazzeroni, Pastor
Mr. Joe Manning, Principal

 

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