Celebrating Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, Chicago students give back to the community
CHICAGO (CBS) -- On this feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a small Catholic School in Little Village is doing big things.
There are only about 150 students but all of them spent the day helping the community.
CBS 2's Noel Brennan shows us how the school turned into an assembly line of service.
In this classroom, students like Layla Bernard feel the spirit of giving – from head to toe.
"With my glasses and my head scarf and my boots," Bernard said.
For the past week, the girls at Our Lady of Tepeyac High School in Little Village have been gathering all sorts of canned goods all in preparation for Tuesday.
"Because today is the feast day of our Lady of Guadalupe and our own parish, Mother of the Americas and our Lady of Tepeyac, so we're celebrating by giving back to our community," said English teacher Emily Curtis.
Emily Curtis lights up just thinking about the work her students are doing.
"It's really cool to see young people so involved and so passionate about serving others," Curtis said.
Across the hall, another group puts together care packages for people experiencing homelessness.
"We're doing it to make other people happy. making other people happy makes us happy," Bernard said.
Students have done all the collecting and the packaging. now, it's time to deliver to their community. The students drop off more than 100 bags of donated food at four community fridges set up by the Love Fridge – a mutual aid group in Chicago.
"Allowing them this opportunity to engage and lead different service projects for our community is really, really important," Curtis said.
Looks like students learned the lesson all on their own. Students at the school also delivered winter clothes to migrants in Little Village.