Helping the homeless in the community

By Tanya Connor | The Catholic Free Press

A conference about homelessness gave local students the chance to apply what they’ve learned at school about human dignity – and to plan a Catholic Schools Week project.
Fourteen students from St. Peter-Marian Central Catholic Junior/Senior High School attended the 8th Annual Visions of Change Youth Summit Nov. 9 in Worcester, said Megan Capurso, director of campus ministry.  
The summit was presented to students from a dozen schools by the Central Massachusetts Housing Alliance, Hanover Insurance, UNUM and Maureen Binienda, superintendent of Worcester Public Schools, according to the Housing Alliance website www.cmhaonline.org. It encouraged students “to take an active role in building a healthy community through education and positive action.”
“I think it was a good opportunity … for me, but also for people in Worcester, to see these are the people who are going to grow up to be educators … (and) people in the helping professions…,” Miss Capurso said. It’s a hopeful sign that they recognize the dignity and value of all people, she said.
“I think they learned it (at St. Peter-Marian),” she said. “They take religion every year. Human dignity is one of the basic principles of Christianity, and of many religions.
“But we are a Catholic school. That human dignity is going to be at the heart of everything we do. They learn about it in class, but they also have the opportunity to live it and see it each day. This is a very loving community.… People are valued for who they are as people.
“They went to the conference with that instilled in them,” she said. “The conference gave them the opportunity to grow in that and to ask themselves … ‘How am I going to use that basic principle to help the overall community?’”
Organizers recommended service projects as a way to help the community: Dimes for Diapers, or collecting hats and mittens or school supplies, or designing another project.
Miss Capurso figured their project would dovetail with Catholic Schools Week, Jan. 27-Feb. 2, which is using the theme: “Catholic Schools: Learn. Serve. Lead. Succeed.”
“I wanted to try to do something to represent each of these pieces,” she said. “I thought a good way to combine ‘serve’ and ‘lead’ would be to get these kids who went (to) the conference involved.”
So she asked them what they’d like to do and how they would go about it. They chose to give a dress-down day to any student who donates school supplies, she said. They figured St. Peter-Marian hadn’t done that type of collection and people always need school supplies. And students would be more likely to bring in those donations next week, during Catholic Schools Week, if each donor (not just those in a winning homeroom) got to wear something other than their uniform.
“They love dress-downs,” Miss Capurso said. “It’s a way to show individuality … show off their fashion skills.”
“We’re all lucky enough” to take school supplies for granted, but getting them is harder for others in the community, commented Aidan McEvoy, a junior who attended the conference.
He said the conference was much more educational than sitting in a classroom.
“It was more reality-based,” he said. “I had no idea how bad (homelessness) was,” how expensive life is and how easy it is to become homeless.
The keynote talk by Liz Murray, author of “Breaking Night: A Memoir of Forgiveness, Survival, and My Journey from Homeless to Harvard,” made homelessness real to the audience, he said.
“She … made us feel like we’re there,” going through homelessness with her, Aidan said. “Not only her, but a lot of other kids.”
Ms. Murray’s story is told on the Housing Alliance website: “After completing high school in two years, all while camping out in New York City parks and subway stations, she was awarded a full scholarship to Harvard University,” where she received her bachelor’s degree.
Miss Capurso said three or four of her students said that they’d like to read the book – and then were given free copies.
She said the conference was very beneficial because they got to hear about homelessness and experiences of it from a personal view and a practical view.
To put what they learned into practice, they pretended to be government leaders deciding how to use their budgets. The students allocated the highest amounts of money for education and helping people, including the homeless, Miss Capurso recalled. But they learned that in real life, in Massachusetts, not as much is spent on those things.
“It was really surprising to see how it was divided up in reality,” Aidan said.
He also expressed appreciation for another activity in which groups of students were asked to illustrate their vision of a home. That taught them teamwork and how different people have different visions of what a home is like; their visions seemed to have a lot to do with what school they attend, he said. He liked that Catholic, public and charter schools were represented, he said.
Aidan said the conference showed him that homelessness is a big problem, not only in Worcester but everywhere, and that when everyone joins together “we can make a big, powerful difference.”
He expressed hope that the St. Peter-Marian students who attended can share what they learned with others in the school, in addition to holding the school supplies drive.
Miss Capurso said she saw a couple students demonstrate leadership in a unique way at the conference.
“It can be very difficult to talk to people you don’t know,” she said. “Two students said, ‘We want to go make friends.’” Ricardo Reyes, a senior, and Jillian Barrett, a junior, went to every table, introduced themselves, talked and laughed, she said.