To prepare for the season of Advent, students at Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School operated their annual Hope for the Holidays Drive.
Running from Monday, November 29 to Wednesday, December 8 the students decorated the school and visited classrooms to promote the drive in support of children and mothers at Michael House.
“My goal for this year Hope for the Holiday is encourage the school to continue to raise money even when our goal of 5,000 is reached. But my main goal is to support Michael House's family as much as possible through this holiday season as it has been a hard year for everyone so we all deserve a happy and worry-free Christmas,” said Brianna Pham, student lead for this year’s initiative.
Each homeroom was assigned a mother and child with a list of their favourite stores, gift cards will be purchased from donations so that mothers will be able to purchase gifts for their children this Christmas.
“Our Hope for the Holidays Christmas Drive started four years ago. We wanted to help an organization in our local community and decided on supporting the families living at Michael House. Each year we would contact Michael House for wish lists for the families,” shared Penny Lerit, mathematics teacher at Bishop Macdonell. “During the first two years we purchased gifts and delivered the items before Christmas. Last year due to Covid, we decided to collect gift cards for the families instead. This allowed the mothers to purchase gifts for their children for Christmas. This was so well received that we decided to continue to collect gift cards for the families this year.”
Contributing to local causes is an important aspect of the Bishop Macdonell experience for students.
“We believe it is important for students to provide charitable acts in the community so that they will discover the special gifts/talents that they can contribute to Guelph,” shared Lerit. “Whether that is designing a bulletin board to advertise or counting and collecting gift cards, we hope that our students will be encouraged to continue to help others in their community throughout their lives. We want them to see that if you work together, it is amazing the difference that you can make in the community.”
Throughout the campaign, this year’s Hope for the Holidays Christmas Drive raised over $5000 in that will be donated to Michael House.
“I want to thank Mrs. Lerit and Ms. Fortney for all of their hard work as well as all of the BM students, volunteers and families for all of the support,” said Pham. “I hope everyone have a great Christmas break and stay safe!”
To learn more about happenings at Bishop Macdonell Catholic High School, please visit their website or follow along on Twitter.