Cardboard City II

This past Saturday night we hosted our second annual Cardboard City event.  This night is designed to have our students spend a night experiencing homelessness and to raise money to benefit charities that help fight homelessness in Manchester.  This year we had about 100 students (with students from both Trinity High School and St. Joseph Regional Junior High School) and a number of amazing parents and teachers join us.

The students began arriving around 6:30pm and set up their homes for the night.  At 8:30pm we brought them into the gym where we began our evening with Mass.  Father Anselm Smedile, OSB of Saint Anselm College was our celebrant.  In his homily Father Anselm spoke of his own experience working with the poor, especially during a service trip to Phoenix.  Following Mass, we showed the movie "The Blindside" and headed back outside around midnight.

Mrs. Gomez of our Modern Languages department went to Hannaford on Saturday morning and got them to donate $25 worth of bread to feed the students before they went to bed.  She put a sign on her car that said "Midnight Run", inspired by a similar event Bishop Liabsci spoke of at our recent teacher's formation day.  We had the kids settle down by 1am or so but very shortly thereafter it began to rain...and rain...and rain.  Eventually it was pretty heavy and many of the boxes were beginning to leak.  Many students went inside to the gym and around 5am some started to head home as it was getting pretty miserable out.  Clean-up was an adventure with the heavy rain and soggy boxes but thanks to some very dedicated parents (Mr. and Mrs. Doherty P'14 and '16, Mrs. Curran P'14 and '16, Mr. Drouin P'13, Mr. Dufour P'14 and '16, Mr. Procek P'13 and '16, Mrs. Smith P'14, and Mr. and Mrs. Cullity P'13) we were able to get everything cleaned up by 7:30am.

I haven't counted all the money yet but I think the students raised well over $4,000.00!  We will give the funds to New Horizons in Manchester who do so much for the homeless and the poor in the city.

Despite the weather and messy clean-up, it was indeed a fruitful night and quite an experience for our students.  They indeed get it.