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Generosity and compassion are what help define us at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy. It is through our Outreach program that these virtues are culminated. NFA has a long standing tradition of outreach to those less in need. Formed on the foundation of our Service Learning Program, we come together as a school wide community each month to raise funds, goods and awareness for a number of sponsored works and mentor sites. Each September brings a new opportunity for NFA to show an outpouring of love and concern. This year, our support went to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia’s Cancer Research and Treatment. We raised 600 dollars through a “pretzel day” which was donated in the name of Norwood-Fontbonne Academy to CHOP’s Oncology Department. The past two years our September Outreach has gone to support the Tsunami Relief and Katrina Relief. Our second Outreach of each year focuses on providing assistance to St. John’s Hospice in Philadelphia. We organize a collection of socks, underwear, gloves, hats, scarves, blankets, winter coats, etc. In addition to the collection of clothing, monetary donations are also accepted. Our seventh graders often deliver the collection when they travel to St. John’s for their Service Learning experience. In November, we turn our interest to St. Hugh of Cluny, another one of our Service Learning mentor sites. During this time of year, we have a different kind of collection. Each homeroom is given an empty basket with plastic wrap, ribbon, etc. and their project is to fill the basket with all the ingredients you would need for a Thanksgiving dinner; from bread crumbs to the turkey! After the baskets are blessed at our prayer service, our 6th grade CSC students help deliver the baskets to St. Hugh of Cluny, where they are welcomed with warm smiles and the appreciative arms of grateful families. December, of course, is the time for yuletide, and so our Outreach for this month takes on the theme of Christmas. Our generosity is turned toward Holy Name of Camden, once again a mentor site for our Service Learning Program. This time around, each homeroom “adopts” a child or family, for whom they do Christmas shopping. Holy Name provides us with a few “wish lists” and our students do their best to help brighten someone’s Christmas morning. In addition to all of this, many of our families here at Norwood go above and beyond the call of duty, and anonymously take on an entire Holy Name family. Our January Outreach is concentrated into one day, the Martin Luther King, Jr Day of Service. On this day, Norwood families gather in James Anthony Hall to assemble toiletry bags filled with toothpaste, toothbrushes, lotion, shower gel, etc. which once again go to St. John’s Hospice. Our Lenten Season brings our compassion to the children of Archbishop Ryan School for Deaf Children (ARSFDC). Our families collect and purchase hearing aid batteries and monetary donations to help the need-based students of ARSFDC. Our final Outreach of the year is our Easter Season outreach to Casa Del Carmen, a sponsored work of Catholic Social Services, which helps need based single mothers, mostly of Latino ethnicity, with the needs of raising a family. Our students are asked to collect diapers, formula, clothes, and even toys to help support the struggling single mothers. Last year we even had a number of cribs and strollers donated from NFA families. Before each Outreach begins, we kick-off with our Outreach assemblies. A director or coordinator from each of our mentor sites will come in at the beginning of the month to talk to our students and explain to them the needs of the program or organization and the people that benefit from it. More often than not the coordinator will bring along a friend who has benefited from the program. So, for example, Beth Bresnan, volunteer coordinator for St. John’s Hospice, brought Mr. Brown with her; a current resident at St. John’s who is getting ready to move back out into an apartment on his own. Judy Collier, teacher at ARSFDC, brings along some of her students to share their stories with our children. It is through our Outreach program that we grow as a community and family at Norwood-Fontbonne Academy. It is humbling and heartwarming to see the outpouring of love and compassion shown by our overly generous families. It certainly is one of our prouder moments.
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Outreach