School Name and Location:
Mercy Academy, Louisville, KY
Team Name:
Mercy Beyond Borders
Statement of Team Goal:
Because we are an all girls school, we wanted to focus our efforts specifically on women. Our goal is to raise awareness about hunger as it relates to women and address root causes of the problem. We wanted to help an agency that tackles systemic issues. We have developed several initiatives including a Rice Bowl campaign with Catholic Relief Services, a school-wide viewing of Girl Rising and a drive to raise funds for the Heifer Project.
Charity:
Summary of Project:
Our research of hunger around the globe shocked us. We realized that food collection, while critical, provide only a short term relief. We wanted to raise awareness in our student body and guide them to partner with organizations that address systemic solutions to hunger. We decided to work with Catholic Relief Services and the Heifer Project to create solutions.
We split into teams to spread our efforts out and touch more students. First, we teamed with Catholic Relief Services for Rice Bowl collections. Our team hosted a kick-off luncheon for 25 schools in our school district. We had a speaker from Ghana who explained how the food that he received from the program changed his life. Not only did it keep him alive, but it also led to his education because he received his food in school. We organized an on-going collection for 6 weeks in our for CRC.
Our next goal was to raise awareness of hunger, especially as it relates to young women we received permission to show Girl Rising to the whole school. This film shows nine girls who have been affected by hunger and poverty around the globe. We created bracelets to sell at lunch to raise money for our local refugee center.
We will conclude our project with a drive to raise money for Heifer international. We will have our homerooms collect money to buy specific animals that will be sent to developing countries around the globe. One of our members asked her neighbor to bring his alpaca to Mercy as a kick-off. We took donations to have your picture taken with the alpaca. Later this month we will begin the collections in homeroom.
Results:
We have had great results so far. Our CRS/Rice Bowl collection exceeded our goal of $1,000. We raised $1,150 for Catholic Relief Services. This doesn’t include all of the other schools who had collections after the kick-off luncheon. We were able to have 580 students view Girl Rising and we are continuing to sell the bracelets at this time. We already raised $225 from our kick-off event for Heifer International. We hope to raise $1,500 to buy animals for women in developing countries.