1,100 Students Make a BIG Impact
Recently, Charlotte Christian School volunteered for Samaritan’s off-site in a big way. 1,100 students processed 8,000 domestic shoes and over 15,000 international shoes, and wrote 500 Hope Notes in just three days. We sat down with Karl Simon, Director of Production and Outreach at Charlotte Christian School, to hear about their experience and what it meant to students.
Tell me a little bit about your group volunteering.
Charlotte Christian School hosted a three day event at the school for Junior Kindergarten through 12th grade students to volunteer for Samaritan’s Feet.
Why did you decide to volunteer with Samaritan's Feet?
I was introduced to Samaritan’s Feet about 11 years ago when I moved to Charlotte and began working at Charlotte Christian School. We took a group of students to the facility to help process shoes. In my current role as Director of Production and Service, part of my charge was to streamline our service partnerships with the various organizations we have worked with in the past. So, I reached out to Samaritan’s Feet and worked with the volunteer department who helped us organize opportunities to serve throughout the year. I think the goal of the partnership was two-fold: 1. Samaritan’s Feet is a globally recognized organization located about 20 mins from our school and the work they do is incredibly important; and 2. It’s tough to find meaningful service opportunities for 1,100+ kids, but the infrastructure they have in place allows for our entire school to be involved in service.
What tasks did you do and what did you accomplish overall?
Junior Kindergarten - 1st grade students colored about 300 Hope Notes, 2nd - 5th grader processed 7,000 international slides, and middle and high schoolers processed about 8,000 shoes to be distributed in the U.S. and 7,000 international slides. In order to adhere to our COVID protocols, each group was only able to process shoes for about 10-15 minutes, so they had to hit it hard when they got into the room. The kids did not disappoint with regards to their efforts. There were a lot of comments from kids about wanting to stay longer to help which was heartwarming to hear. Prior to working on the shoe project, we processed about 2,500 hygiene kits for Samaritan’s Feet with just the 7th graders.
What did this volunteering mean to students? To faculty?
It has been very hard to get out and serve this year, or even have events on campus that would impact others off campus. There have been a lot of non-profits that we have worked with in the past years that either severely-limited or cut off outside volunteer opportunities all together. When we can find partnership opportunities that genuinely need our help and will make an immediate impact in our community, we value those.
To the kids, the immediate impact is "doing something other than sitting in my desk with a mask on." With each class, I gave them a 30 second debrief on who they would be working for, what their efforts would accomplish, and who would be helped by their actions. Some of our teachers also jumped in with their class to help process, while others filmed their kids to make this event a permanent memory for their class this year.
Share a little bit the significance of volunteering in the midst of a pandemic.
We have been struggling to find "normal" this year. Everything was upended to start the school year, and while we have fought valiantly to keep some of our important institutions in our school fabric, we have not been immune to the seriousness of COVD-19 and have had to deal with other large trips and events being canceled. It has been a year of whiplash. Being able to still participate in volunteer opportunities has been a little bastion of "normal" in a sea of uncertainty. And while we haven't been able to have as many events as we would have liked, working with Samaritan’s Feet has been something we can be proud of when we look back at this year.
Samaritan’s Feet had a need and we had students and a location that we could offer to help meet that need. And while our students might not meet a neighbor who is directly impacted by Samaritan’s Feet, all of those kids know what it’s like to need or want shoes. We had all of the supplies stacked up in our gym the day before the event, and students came in you could see them doing the math being done while recognizing just how fortunate they are and, also, that they have a responsibility to help better someone else's day in preparing a simple, basic need for them.