A message from Campus Ministry Office:

This week, November 10-16, is World Kindness Week and next week, November 17-23, is National Hunger & Homeless Awareness Week. As we begin the month of November, let’s focus for a moment on kindness, hunger, homelessness, Thanksgiving, and what we can do to help those in need at this time of year. 

As most of our community members are aware, a group of Visitation Sisters has been living in Minneapolis for 35 years. In fact, they celebrated their anniversary this past weekend. For those 35 years, Visitation School has supported them in their ministry, doing whatever we can to provide assistance in the outreach they do.

The essential starting point of Catholic Social Teaching is the dignity of all human life. Food is essential to living a human existence, so the right to food is a fundamental right. The primary area in Minneapolis that the sisters serve is a food desert - Cub Foods is the only grocery store available to people in the community. Every month, the sisters hand out 150 $15 Cub Food cards to people in need, but that money doesn’t go very far. For example, it might buy a loaf of bread, a gallon of milk, and a dozen eggs. Many families in the neighborhood struggle to put food on the table and there is rarely enough to provide for special celebrations. 

For many years at Thanksgiving, this Vis community provided boxes of food, including a turkey and roasting pan, to close to 150 families each year. In recent years, we have prepared a smaller number of food baskets and focused on collecting $25 Cub Foods gift cards that allow families to choose the foods that they would like to prepare for the holiday.

This Thanksgiving, the Sisters have asked us to help provide $25-100 each for 100 families - so we’ve set a goal of collecting $6000.00 in gift cards. This is where all of us come in. We are asking anyone who is able to donate $25 Cub cards to help all of these families celebrate Thanksgiving.

We’ll be collecting gift cards from now through Tuesday, November 26, when they will be placed into personalized Thanksgiving cards and distributed to families at the Sisters’ home. 

Lower and Middle School students will also have the opportunity in homerooms and advisories to put together family boxes for 24 families the Sisters have chosen to receive them. There will be more information provided about these baskets from LS and MS faculty as they plan with students. Upper School students are encouraged to talk to their families, get together with friends, or give up their Caribou or Starbucks for a week and use the money they might have spent on something frivolous to purchase a gift card to help those in need. 

This Vis community has proven its generosity time and again. Once again, let’s show our gratitude for all the ways we have been blessed by helping families who might need a hand-up right now. Thank you in advance for your generosity.  

Please contact Kathleen Daniewicz with any questions. Donations of gift cards or cash may be sent to the Campus Ministry office.

Upcoming Events:

November All School Out-of-Uniform Day

All funds collected on our monthly out-of-uniform day on Friday, November 22 will be used to purchase additional gift cards to support the Thanksgiving collection. Thank you!

The Christmas Stocking Project is coming!

Senior Salesian Leaders are cutting out the stockings, so we are in need of volunteers to sew them! If you are interested in helping with this wonderful project by doing some simple sewing, please contact Kathleen Daniewicz. Materials should be available starting on Monday, Nov. 11.