Anaheim - Cornelia Connelly School was selected as one of 10 schools for a Global Solidarity School Pilot Program and will send two representatives to Malawi, Africa in July to study and observe the Catholic Relief Services (CRS) outreach and assistance with water, health, food, security and peace-building, before bringing the mission back to Connelly's classrooms and community.
Catholic Relief Services launched the Global Solidarity Schools Initiative in 2010 - a year of development - after years of research and feedback from diocesan staff, principals, presidents, faculty and youth. The program strives to engage the whole school in order to live in solidarity with the poor and vulnerable around the world.
Connelly is one of only three schools in the United States chosen to journey with the Global Solidarity program to Malawi July 7-20. Assistant Head of School, Martha Serrano and Matt Marshall, a social science teacher, will travel keep daily journals and take notes while in Malawi. They'll return to the campus to develop workshops for faculty and staff, classroom activities and advocacy, fundraising and action on the issues they learned about. The goal is reach out, not just the students and the school, but to the community with actions that show solidarity.
The program enhances the school's existing commitment to community service, said Head of School, Sr. Francine Gunther. "Cornelia Connelly School is extremely honored to be chosen for this program. It will give our students and faculty the opportunity to expand our vision, and help to give us an in-depth understanding of our responsibility to our global community."
Since community service is integrated into the fabric of Connelly education, students embrace service as a normal aspect of their lives. Our students lead by example, by volunteering not just in the Connelly community, but their surrounding community and with peers in parishes, giving of their time and talents in "Actions Not Words," as our foundress, Cornelia Connelly, encouraged. The majority of Connelly's students far exceed the minimum 80 hours of community service requirement before graduation.
Connelly students bring global issues of hunger, human rights and access to water, to campus with passionate explanations to their peers that what they often take for granted is simply a hope to others, and that sometimes, even an education is a privilege not all young women can experience. As part of the Senior Service Project, senior students complete yearlong community service projects as individual students or in small groups. They write their goals, mission statement, plan of action, biography and research on their organization and then a reflection paper on their experiences. The students prepare slideshows and scrapbooks and present their projects to their peers at a spring assembly.
