Woodlands Academy joins Chicago sister schools in global day of service
Members of the Woodlands Academy of the Sacred Heart family - including students, parents and alumni - joined forces with those from Chicago sister schools Josephinum Academy and Sacred Heart Schools/Sheridan Road to spend a Saturday helping those who help others. They were part of Global Service Day, a bicentennial celebration marking the opening of the first Sacred Heart school in North America on Sept. 14, 1818. Volunteers from the international Sacred Heart community, comprised of schools in 41 countries, provided services to those in need around the world on Sept. 15.
The Chicago area project sent more than 200 volunteers from the three Sacred Heart schools to five service agencies providing food and other assistance to the needy. At the one Lake County site, Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, approximately 30 volunteers helped the organization's efforts to feed children in parts of the world most impacted by desperate food shortages. Founded in 1987, Feed My Starving Children is a Christian non-profit that provides nutritionally complete meals specifically formulated for malnourished children.
Other Global Service Day sites included the Greater Chicago Food Depository, which works to end hunger in Cook County. There, Sacred Heart's nearly 20 volunteers repacked food from large bulk shipments into amounts appropriate for individuals and families.
Seventy members of the Sacred Heart family joined with Alliance for the Great Lakes for its Adopt-A-Beach global cleanup day. As part of the International Coastal Cleanup, volunteers collected hundreds of pounds of litter from beaches along Lake Michigan.
Nearly 90 volunteers pitched in at Cradles to Crayons, an organization that aims to make life better for Chicago area children living in poverty. They worked at various stations preparing toys, books and clothing for distribution.
Twenty members of the Sacred Heart family joined to help gather the harvest at City Farm on Global Service Day. This working farm in the heart of Chicago sells most of its produce to local restaurants in hopes of reducing local chefs' carbon footprint while increasing Chicago's food self-sufficiency.
The Society of the Sacred Heart was founded in France in 1800 by St. Madeleine Sophie Barat, to give young women a classical education - not a common thing at that time. Her goal was to educate girls so that they could have a transforming influence in society. In order to do this, she believed that women must make themselves capable of doing what men do; act on society to transform it.
Opening the first Sacred Heart school in North America was the realization of St. Rose Philippine Duchesne's dream to travel from France, where she was one of Barat's earliest companions, to the New World. During her time in North America, Duchesne would oversee schools in five locations - three in Missouri and two in Louisiana. Her schools in St. Louis were the first to educate students of color. She also opened the first orphanage in that city.
Duchesne is also known for her work with Native Americans of the Potawatomi tribe. In 1838, hundreds of Potawatomi were forced from their land in Indiana. They traveled along what would become known as the Trail of Death to the Sugar Creek mission in Kansas. Duchesne and three other Sacred Heart sisters joined them there in 1841 to open a school for Potawatomi girls.
A Sacred Heart education is based on the five goals comprising the mission statement of all network schools worldwide. Global Service Day was done in the true spirit of Goal III: "a social awareness which impels to action." Woodlands Academy's service program is designed to raise students' consciousness about the poor, the marginalized and the disadvantaged while encouraging them to promote social justice and social responsibility. Woodlands students need to perform at least 70 hours of community service to graduate. Many of them become passionate about service and far exceed the required minimum hours.
Woodlands Academy students actually got a jump on Saturday's Global Service Day by visiting three Lake County sites to offer their own Service Day help on Friday, Sept. 14. Freshmen and sophomores went to Feed My Starving Children in Libertyville, where they assembled food packets for distribution. Meanwhile, juniors and seniors were dispatched to Lamb's Farm in Libertyville and Openlands Lakeshore Preserve in Highland Park, where they helped out with chores such as fall cleanup.
In addition to the Sacred Heart bicentennial, 2018 also marks Woodlands Academy's 160th anniversary. Founded in Chicago in 1858, the school has been at its present East Westleigh Road location in Lake Forest since 1904.