Students enjoy collecting money for a family in need

IC Photo by Laura V. Sausedo

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Students rehearse for the Christmas play, which is part of the Christmas services at Our Lady of Lourdes School.

SALT LAKE CITY - Selecting a family in need to help in this season sounds like a very noble cause, and that's exactly what the eighth-grade students in Our Lady of Lourdes School did.

Everything started when, at the beginning of the year, Christy Terrill and her 29 students attended a Mass celebrated by Bishop John C. Wester in which they were asked to raise money for those in need.

Terrill and her students brainstormed ideas for serving a broader community; they decided that the way of doing that was having "Parents' Night Out" fundraiser in which they babysat younger children while the parents went out alone.

"When Christmas was coming, we started to think what can we do to earn more money to help a family, and we decided that the Parents Night Out was such a success the first time we should do it again to sponsor a family for Christmas," Terrill said.

The first parents night out took place on September .

The date was set; Dec. 4, a Friday. The students started setting up different stations in the installations of the gym in the school,

They had different stations such as reading (in which they read Christmas stories), play station (duck, duck, goose) and arts and crafts station in which the kids made prints of their hands and shoes into a little reindeer in which they also wrote a note to their parents.

The fee for the three-hour night was $10; the children were served pizza for dinner, Terrill said. They also showed a movie just before the younger children were to be picked up by their parents.

"The eighth graders enjoyed our younger kids," Terrill said. "They don't get any time to play together, and we also let the parents having a night alone."

Lourdes students collected $130, which will go toward buying presents for the kids of the family in need; the family was selected through suggestions of the parents.

"This family has two kids, 7 and 9," Terrill said. "The students were broken in to groups and assigned which was going to buy what for each of these kids. Some of the students are also bringing stocking stuffers."

Hannah Samowetz, a student in Terrill's class, said, "I think its great because we are giving services to our community; we also let the parents go on an evening alone." She said she expects the kids receiving the gifts that the students purchased will "feel lots of joy and happiness, because if you give everyone is happy."

Jamil McPherson, another student from Our lady of Lourdes, said that collecting money for people in need "is important because we are very fortunate to be able to go to school and not all the kids have that opportunity, and I personally think that every child should."

He added that, with the economy, "a lot of people are losing their jobs and a lot of parents can't buy presents for the kids, and they should enjoy every Christmas that they have."

Terrill emphasized that teaching her students the art of giving is important because "it is part of our mission not only to teach them in the academics also to teach them to serve the community.