Students Serving Students at Thanksgiving Time
The Elementary students at Summit Private School will be serving Thanksgiving dinner to the children served by the Youth Activity Center (YAC) of Boca Raton as one of many service projects that these children well be engaged in this year. Every year Summit families, with the help of its PTA and devoted parent Evelyn Swid, create a Thanksgiving Feast for the entire student body, families and staff and the leftovers are taken to Boca Helping Hands. This year, during a staff meeting, there was the idea to invite the students from the YAC to serve them a Thanksgiving feast as well. Dr. Susan Mike, Vice Head of School and Kelle Enriquez, Service Chairman for the PTA, were thrilled with the idea and were determined to make it happen. The feast takes place, Wednesday, November 19th from 3:30-5pm. A full Thanksgiving dinner will be served by the Summit Elementary volunteers and parents followed by sports and games and a dance party. We are thrilled to have this opportunity to serve the community in this way- child to child, heart to heart.
The students at Summit, grades 1st-6th have been serving the Youth Activity Center students since last Valentine’s Day, when the students, parents and staff came together to provide new books, snacks, crafts, games and dancing in a “Heart-to-Heart Giving Party”. Each student of the YAC program, approximately 95 children, received a new book and they even took home a gently used book for their siblings.
From this act of service, Kelle Enriquez, a Summit parent and active philanthropist, saw a need to provide these children additional snacks or a meal and shared the idea with Summit Administration to set up a monthly Peanut Butter and Jelly Jam, with the assistance of the Children’s Aid Club, to make sandwiches for the students of the YAC program. Since then the PB& J Jam has grown and we now have joined with Grandview to increase our sandwich-making capacity. Our first event was in October and we collectively made 600 sandwiches. We plan to make a variety of sandwiches monthly to serve these children. So how fitting to provide these children with a festive meal as we give thanks for the service we can provide and the lessons of gratitude our children can experience and share.
Posted on Summit Community Service Events's Bulletin Board