Saints are changing the world through the power of relationship.
When I think about our service-learning program here at St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes School, I think of our junior kindergarten students making holiday wreaths for our maintenance staff. I think of third grade students playing bingo with the residents at Lincolnia Senior Center. I think of eighth grade students cheering on athletes at a Special Olympics competition. And I think of eleventh grade students sharing a community dinner with refugee families or playing soccer with the kids at our partner school, St. Paul’s, in Haiti.
An important goal of our JK-12 service-learning program is to cultivate empathy in our students and to help them understand that we are all connected; we are all part of one big human family. And so we must care for one another. We must be good to one another.
Ultimately, I think we want to prepare St. Stephen’s and St. Agnes students to be people who use their time, their education and their resources to heal the broken places in our world, to offer hope to those who need it most, and to transform unjust structures of society.
And I’m absolutely convinced that work begins in relationship.
