Activities

8th Grade:
Students work at Faith Café (provides meals to the homeless) twice a week. They set tables, serve meals and drinks, and clean tables. (http://faithcafetampa.com/)
8th graders also participate as Primary Class Leaders twice a week. All 8th grade students will participate in a done-in-a-day outreach project, such as volunteering at a Title 1 school or working at LaVoy Exceptional Center, where they paint, landscape, and help beautify the campus. (http://lavoy.mysdhc.org/)

7th Grade:
Students deliver hot meals to shut-ins twice a week through the Meals on Wheels program. Meals on Wheels is a non-profit agency that provides nutritious meals to homebound persons, usually the elderly or handicapped. The project is rewarding both for the students and the people we serve. The students gain satisfaction by helping others, and the meal recipients truly enjoy seeing the students. (http://www.mowtampa.org/)
The seventh graders also lead an annual school-wide Penny Drive in the spring to help the pediatric clinic provide for the daily needs of the children of Papoli, Uganda. The clinic is a project of the non-profit group Village Partners International (VPI). It provides nutrition, counseling, and health care to the thousands of children within walking distance of the facility. Over the past few years, St. Mary’s Penny Drive has annually raised approximately $3500, which feeds the patients for a month. (http://www.villagepartnersinternational.org/)

6th Grade:
As many as 250,000 children deal with hunger in the Tampa Bay area. The sixth grade class learns about food insecurity in their hometown and takes action by collecting breakfast foods like cereal, breakfast bars, and oatmeal in the spring as part of Feeding Tampa Bay’s Cereal for Summer program. Students devise and implement a school-wide food-collection campaign, making posters to hang in school, creating videos for the morning show, and talking to classes in order to ensure that a child in need has a nutritious breakfast every morning in the summer. (https://feedingtampabay.org/)

5th Grade:
The 5th grade will partner with the Make-A-Wish Foundation. The partnership will include learning opportunities for the students and will provide valuable support for a mission-driven, local charity. The 5th graders will lead a letters to Santa campaign in the winter and will sponsor a group for the annual walk-a-thon in the spring. (https://wish.org/)

4th Grade:
Students support the Clothes To Kids. The mission of Clothes To Kids (CTK) is to provide new and quality used clothing to low income, school-aged children, free of charge. It is the goal of CTK to provide each eligible child (K thru 12) with a week’s worth of clothing. All underwear and socks are new. All other clothing is a combination of new and quality used clothing. CTK must constantly add to our inventory to ensure every child leaves the store with a complete wardrobe. (https://clothestokids.org/)

3rd Grade:
The third grade students will partner with the Junior League of Tampa to support their Community Service Diaper Bank Program. The Diaper Bank collects disposable diapers to support a variety of nonprofit agencies throughout Hillsborough County. These donations allow agencies such as the Healthy Start Program and Guardian ad Litem to disperse diapers to those in need. The third graders will meet with representatives of the Junior League to learn about the need for diapers and the impact the donation will have on their community. Students will advertise by creating informative posters, collect, and sort all the school-wide donations. (https://www.jltampa.org/)

2nd Grade:
Students donate animal food, supplies, and old t-shirts to make dog toys for the Humane Society of Tampa Bay. (https://humanesocietytampa.org/)

1st Grade:
Students put together craft bags and write letters for sick children at St. Joseph's Children's Hospital. (http://www.sjbhealth.org/home_childrens.cfm?id=585)

Pre-K and Kindergarten:
Students learn about Metropolitan Ministries and participate in a year-
round food and toy collection. (http://www.metromin.org/)