‘Journey to erase poverty’: Terre Haute children take steps to help the poor

Providence Sister Mary Montgomery, the director of the Terre Haute Deanery Pastoral Center, talks with several religious education students about their global water quality project for the Catholic Social Teaching Fair on March 22 at St. Benedict Parish in Terre Haute. Many religious education programs at parishes in the Terre Haute Deanery sponsored the educational social justice programs for the first time. (Photo by Mary Ann Wyand)

By Mary Ann Wyand

TERRE HAUTE—During Lent, sixth-graders Caroline Potter and Luke Walker of St. Benedict Parish in Terre Haute embarked on an educational “Journey to Erase Poverty” in the world.

They were among hundreds of Terre Haute Deanery religious education students who studied the seven principles of Catholic social teaching in February and March. The students also prepared parish exhibits about the life and dignity of the human person, the need to care for the poor and vulnerable, the dignity of work and rights of workers, solidarity and care for God’s creation, and the importance of family and community as well as rights and responsibilities.

“We learned that many people aren’t as fortunate as we are,” Caroline explained on March 22 after the Catholic Social Teaching Fair at St. Benedict Parish. “It’s sad knowing that some people don’t have a home or anything to eat.”

In some countries, she said, “many people die from polluted water every day. It’s just really sad that they don’t have clean water.”

Caroline and Luke also participated in a service project with other fifth- and sixth-grade religious education students at their parish. They volunteered at a community center in a low-income neighborhood.

“We decided to help out the 14th and Chestnut Community Center by giving them food for the children,” she said. “We brought snacks and helped the kids with homework or played games with them.”

Research for their class project inspired her to think about poor people in the world, Caroline said. “I pray that God will bless every single person who lives in poverty because they go through so many things in their life that are so bad for them. I just want everybody to be okay. It breaks my heart knowing how many people are homeless every day. In the United States, about 775,000 people are homeless.”

After studying ways to eliminate global poverty, Luke said he wants people to know that “40,000 kids [in the world] will die in the next 24 hours of malnutrition, which is not getting enough nutrients in your body.”

Luke said it is sad to think about “how a lot of people are really hungry in the world because poor people deserve better than that.”

He liked volunteering at the community center and said the experience made him realize that he can help people all the time.

“I would ask God to bless each and every person who lives in poverty and suffers from not eating enough, not having shelter and not having a good family,” he said. “I pray that they can find faith in God, and they can have better things in life.”

Providence Sister Mary Montgomery, the director of the Terre Haute Deanery Pastoral Center, participated in five mission trips to serve the poor in El Salvador and Guatemala with DePauw University students during the 1990s while ministering as a pastoral associate at St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Greencastle.

She was encouraged by the enthusiasm for social justice demonstrated by the religious education students in all the deanery parishes.

“The first graders [at St. Benedict Parish] were telling me about how many people have to survive on only a few tablespoons of rice per day,” Sister Mary said. “They had prepared small packets of rice and eaten that small amount for supper one night. Now they want to do more to help the poor. … They realize that we live in a large world, … but that we are really brothers and sisters. As Jesus says, we are all God’s children, and we are called to share and do all we can to help those who are in need.”

The children are very good teachers, Sister Mary said. “I think they’re going to be able to help their parents and other adults in our parishes to become more aware of the Catholic social teachings, which is what Jesus taught.”

At St. Paul the Apostle Parish in Greencastle, DePauw University junior and biochemistry major Amanda Meyer participated in the Catholic Social Teaching Fair with religious education students in grade school and high school.

At the request of Paulette Davis, the administrator of religious education and campus minister, Meyer prepared a display about her service learning trip to Costa Rica in January with other DePauw students, who helped install water purifiers to provide clean water for poor people.

“Water [quality] is the No. 1 issue across the world,” said Meyer, a member of SS. Francis and Clare Parish in Greenwood. “Water-related diseases claim more lives than all forms of violence, including war. On my mission experience, I learned that there are simple ways to combat this problem.”

After talking with the religious education students about their exhibits, Meyer said she was impressed by their creative topics and thorough research.

“It was evident that some of the kids had done really good research,” she said. “They had reported facts that I didn’t know, and probably many adults in the parish didn’t know either. It was good to get everybody sharing information that we can all benefit from and ways that we can live out our faith in daily life.”

High school religious education students at St. Mary-of-the-Woods Parish near West Terre Haute were so enthusiastic about their social justice topic that they decided to earn money for an unusual service project.

Diana Bird, the director of religious education, said St. Mary-of-the-Woods Parish teenagers raised $70 to buy a llama for a poor family in Peru, and plan to purchase another farm animal for a needy family in a developing country next year.

At St. Patrick and St. Margaret Mary parishes in Terre Haute, Kim Swaner, the coordinator of religious education, said parishioners who attended the Catholic Social Teaching Fair realized that “we can all learn from the children.”

Next fall, Swaner said, “we hope to see this fair evolve from being a simple ‘show and tell’ that we had during one hour on a Sunday morning into a program for the parish that takes a little more time. It’s just wonderful to see the kids and their parents making the connection between what we offer them from Scripture to what they know is going on in their life. This fair was a really engaging way to present the material and get folks excited about it.” †