Every year, Williamstown’s Our Lady of Peace Parish sponsors a school in an impoverished area, to feed its students, and the faith community recently put on thier walking shoes to help hungry children.
The effort was part of their partnership with Mary’s Meals, a Bloomfield, NJ-based charity which feeds over 1.5 million students in schools every year across Asia, Africa, South America, and the Caribbean. As youth receive their food at school, they are offered an education to set them up for the future.
The organization is named after Mary, the Mother of God, who raised her own child in poverty.
The hour walk on the grounds of Our Lady of Peace last month included youth, parents, and grandparents all masked and bundled up, with sneakers laced. Participants wore race bibs imprinted with the faces of the children they were supporting.
Money raised through donations went to the Dagweh School in Liberia.
“We give thanks for what we have, and support others,” says Kari Janisse, Coordinator of Youth Ministry at the parish. Students at Our Lady of Peace’s school, Saint Mary, have been learning throughout the years about Mary’s Meals, and the need of their peers. “We’re called to look beyond (our own lives), and serve the poor, she added.
For more on Mary’s Meals, visit www.marysmealsusa.org/en/.
at the bottom and then tap “Add to Home Screen”
