Three students from Sacred Heart of Jesus School, Bayside, have collected over 3,500 children’s book to donate to San Andres, a school in a poor mountain village in the Philippines that had no library for its students.
The students, Christopher Wren, Maggie Cash, and Liz Gold, named their newly formed organization “Reading Rocks the World” and worked with the school to collect the books, which have already been shipped to San Andres.
To show their gratitude, the students of San Andres created a large poster of the students of Sacred Heart. They will also name their new library: “Reading Rocks the World.”
A nurse from the Philippines, who now lives in New York, donated “Reading Rocks the World” T-shirts for the children in the Philippines to wear.
The project’s success encouraged the new student group to repeat the efforts of its members every year and send books to other villages around the Philippines, a predominantly Catholic nation.
Dennis Farrell, principal of Sacred Heart, has repeatedly supported service projects initiated by students and alumni. The generosity of the parents of the school has made these projects possible.
For the past three years, the school has also donated to the mission group: Nova Hope of Haiti. This year the students collected and purchased more than 2,000 bottles of children’s vitamins for a clinic in Cavillon, Haiti, an area that is stricken by severe poverty and malnutrition.