St. Charles Borromeo to lend a hand to all seven continents

Kolby Weber is cooking dinner for his mother.

Angelle Keller is helping an elderly couple clean their home.

Courtland Crouchet is weeding a garden for the first time in his life.

The kicker? Each of the St. Charles Borromeo eighth graders is performing these tasks for the “bargain-basement” fee of $3.

“Coach Buchanan is looking for someone to babysit for several hours for $3. So there’s a lot of good deals to be made over here!” said the students’ religion teacher, Lisa Benoit, giving options to class members who had yet to find a job to do in honor of “The Blessed Mother’s Extraordinary Birthday.”

To participate, every St. Charles Borromeo student in grades six, seven and eight agreed to complete a job that was out of their comfort zone by Sept. 8 – Mary’s feast day. Their collected earnings will be donated to Heifer International, which provides farm animals to developing countries.

“We’re asking for three dollars because of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit,” said Kellie Verret of the unusual charge for the students’ labors.

Asked by Benoit to explain why they were buying animals for the poor instead of food, the eighth graders noted that livestock is the gift that keeps on giving.

“If you send just money, there’s a limited amount of stuff that you can buy,” noted Jayce Brown. “But if you buy an animal, they can reproduce other animals.”

The project is expected to raise the funds to purchase two flocks of chickens, one flock of ducks and one flock of geese.

As the oldest students on campus, the eighth graders got to choose which type of animals their earnings will be put toward and learned about Third World farming in the process. For example, although ducks lay more eggs than geese, goose eggs are larger and a better source of food; and although rabbits multiply quickly, they are a less reliable food source than fowl, which provide both eggs and meat over a longer period of time.

“Our ultimate goal is water buffalos,” said Benoit, noting that her students hope to purchase larger animals such as goats, pigs and cows as the school year progresses.

The animal project, which targets poor farmers in Asia and Africa, is just one component of the middle school’s 2011-12 service plan to spread its service throughout the world.

“We want to do at least one (project) in every continent,” Benoit said. “The hardest one we’ve got to work with is Antarctica, but we’re gonna get there too!” she said, speculating that scientists living in that icy region may need some sort of assistance.

In North America, the students will act locally by continuing their school’s longtime ministry of distributing sandwiches and beverages to homeless people in the French Quarter. The students will also pray for and correspond with St. Charles Borromeo’s three homegrown seminarians, who are studying in England, New Jersey and Colorado.

Benoit said her students will be raising money throughout the year to fund the various projects.

“But it’s got to be our money,” she reminded her eighth graders. “We don’t want to go after parents; we don’t want to go after grandparents. We want to earn it through our actions – right, guys?”