School News

Hungerfest raises over $4,000 for Haiti relief

Friday, March 05, 2010
Katherine Doble - Archbishop Curley Notre Dame HS

COURTESY PHOTO | Tom Salyer Archbishop Curley Notre Dame students raise $4,200 for Haiti earthquake relief efforts by washing cars at the school’s 14th annual Hungerfest event, designed to raise consciousness and promote solidarity with those locally and around the world who are poor and hungry, through the Lenten practices of prayer, fasting, service, and almsgiving.

MIAMI — Students at Archbishop Curley Notre Dame High School’s 14th annual Hungerfest event raised $4,200 for Haiti earthquake relief and produced a record setting 2,856 bagged lunches for the homeless in the south Florida community.

Organized by the school’s Edmund Rice Service community, Hungerfest is a yearly event that raises consciousness of poverty and world hunger through Lenten practices of prayer and almsgiving.

COURTESY PHOTO | Tom Salyer Archbishop Curley Notre Dame students Philip McCarthy, Laura Martin and Jessica Velasco crowd into one of the vans making the delivery runs with the lunches prepared during the high school’s 14th annual Hungerfest event.

To show solidarity for the poor, the 61 Hunger Fest participants refrained from food and drink, except for water, from Friday afternoon, Feb. 26, until Saturday evening, Feb. 27. During this time, the volunteers also packed sandwich lunches and made prayer cards for the residents of Camillus House, a non-profit organization that provides humanitarian services to men, women and children, and the Miami Rescue Mission.

Students also conducted research on world hunger and poverty and posted their findings on a set of 15 posters that became a Way of the Cross for one of the concluding exercises of the 27-hour fast.

COURTESY PHOTO | Tom Salyer Archbishop Curley Notre Dame students work to produce a record-setting 2,856 sandwich lunches and prayer cards that were later delivered to Camillus House and the Miami Rescue Mission for the hungry and homeless of the city.

The bag lunches were filled with products donated by the high school’s student body as well as Holy Cross Lutheran Christian Day School, Holy Family Catholic School, St. Mary’s Cathedral School, St. Patrick Catholic School, and St. Rose of Lima Catholic School.

The event’s fundraiser was a car wash, where students washed cars for a nominal donation and collected money pledges from parents and neighbors throughout the community and local grammar schools. The monies raised through the Hungerfest are being donated directly to earthquake relief efforts at Curley Notre Dame’s sister school, Abrigot, St. Louis du Nord in the Diocese of Port-de-Paix, Haiti.