Before and during the holiday season, students, faculty and staff at St. Paul VI Catholic High School in Chantilly are busy with service projects to help both their local and international communities. These projects are an expression of the school’s stated mission of serving others and making a positive impact in its community.
One of PVI’s first projects this fall, the Box of Joy program, involved sharing Christmas joy and love with thousands of the world’s poorest children with Christmas gifts every year. For the third consecutive year, project leaders, juniors Lizzie Reback and Allie Reback, organized student volunteers to purchase items and fill shoebox-sized boxes with toys, clothes, school supplies and handwritten cards. The school community filled hundreds of boxes this year. The boxes are then shipped to Cross Catholic Outreach and a rosary and picture book of the story of Jesus are added to each box. The boxes will be sent to children in poverty-stricken countries in Africa, including Malawi, and in Central America, including Guatemala and the Dominican Republic, to support the Catholic mission of spreading the Gospel while blessing thousands of children and their families.
Students said they especially enjoyed filling their boxes because they know how important the gifts are to those who receive them. Junior Hailey Guild explained that after going on a mission trip to Guatemala and meeting a young boy who received a box every year for Christmas, she realized just how much they mean to the children. “It’s always been an important project, but … meeting the little boy really impacted me and showed me how much of a difference this made in their lives,” she said. “I want more kids to have that experience.”
In addition to Christmas gifts, St. Paul VI continued its tradition of organizing an annual food
drive to help the local community. For more than 35 years, the school has partnered with Food for Others, an organization that works as both a food pantry and food bank. The food drive was coordinated by the Student Government Association and incorporated an advisory competition that resonated
with the spirit of service. Each day an empty truck was filled with donated items. The focus this year was on items needed for the Power Pack Program, which provides weekend meals to students facing food insecurity. Students went above and beyond, collecting more than 39,000 pounds of food in one week, including more than 63,000 breakfast meals and nearly 27,000 cans of vegetables.
Even though the Boxes of Joy and food drive are done for the year, St. Paul VI is not finished serving others. The REACH service club, led by club moderator Mary Sullivan-Haller and club president Emilia Grabowski, a senior, is holding its annual toy drive to benefit the Don Bosco Center in Manassas. REACH has the goal of providing as many Christmas gifts and necessities as possible to support the Don Bosco Center and its outreach mission to at-risk youths.
“PVI has always had a strong emphasis on serving others through events such as the annual food drive, as well as smaller projects such as rosary making for the incoming freshmen and crafting valentines for senior citizens,” said Grabowski. “The toy drive adds to this … it gives all PVI students the chance to not only get involved in their community, but also to gain a greater knowledge of struggles their surrounding communities face.” She added that every week at the REACH club meetings she is delighted when she sees regular members bring their friends to help, continuing to spread the mission values of the school.
Although these service projects may be over for the year, the PVI community will continue to serve those around them and live the school’s mission of serving others and making a positive impact on their community.
