GSB Responds to Community Needs

by Peter Schmidt

Director of Studies

Community Service Coordinator

Walking around Gill St. Bernard's School these past several weeks I’m never quite sure what may appear when I turn any corner.   Though learning through service to the community is woven into the fabric of a GSB education from Primary to 12^th grade, opportunities to make a difference for others proliferate at this time of year. 

In the hallways outside the first grade classrooms, stacks of canned goods are piled alongside graphs and charts which integrate the canned good drive on behalf of SHIP (Samaritan Homeless Interim Program in Somerville) into the students’ math studies. Students count, categorize and graph the types of foods collected. Around the corner, a group of fourth grade students, who remembered taking part in the program just a few years earlier, sat down with their teachers to determine how they could help the first graders reach a goal of 1,000 cans by December 17^th.

This food drive is just one of dozens of projects at GSB at this time of year.  Middle school students are engaged in their own food drive in support of the Interfaith Food Pantry of Morris County, while also supporting their ongoing work on behalf of the Senior Citizens Center of Plainfield.  A recently completed food drive in the Upper School sent more than 1,500 items to the Interfaith Food Pantry, as well as twenty-seven food baskets to families served by the Association of Retarded Citizens of Essex County, where some students will be serving food at a holiday party in mid-December. 

In addition to the projects which focus on helping the hungry in our neighborhoods, the school recently donated more than 200 winter coats to FISH, a Dunellen-based agency that serves more than 1,500 families in Middlesex, Union, and Somerset counties.  A group of students in the Upper School’s HOPE organization raised more than $1,000 for the Valerie Fund, an organization at Morristown Memorial Hospital which provides support for children with cancer and childhood blood disorders. 

Speaking of those hallways and what you might discover there, a large bin in the Upper School locker area is full of pet food, dog toys, and other items which will soon be donated to Eleventh Hour Rescue in Rockaway.  Several other hallways have the familiar Toys for Tots containers, where students, parents, and teachers, have been collecting toys.  In addition, the school’s Spanish Honorary Society is also collecting toys for its annual party at the Dover Head Start program.

As important as the outreach, students learn about the value of service and their ability to make a difference for others.  In responding to the needs of others, the school community comes closer together as everyone does his or her part to make the world a little bit better place.