Academy of Our Lady’s CRS Club draws 45 teens

Above: Members of Academy of Our Lady's new CRS Club write letters to Louisiana Senators John Kennedy and William Cassidy in support of federal funding of international humanitarian development projects. Writing letters to public officials is just one of the  ways members will be lending their youthful energy to outreach efforts led by Catholic Relief Services. (Photo by Beth Donze, Clarion Herald)

By BETH DONZE
Clarion Herald

At their lunchtime meeting on Oct. 20, the 45 members of Academy of Our Lady’s new Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Club huddled over their iPads to email their two U.S. senators. Their request: an increase in the amount of international humanitarian development funding in next year’s federal budget.

Crafting regular, well-written letters to public officials advocating for humanitarian issues is just one of the efforts club members are undertaking this year in alliance with CRS, the non-profit founded by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops that annually assists more than 130 million of the world’s poorest, most vulnerable people in 110 countries. CRS carries out the bulk of this outreach in three areas: emergency relief, agriculture and health.

“Our senators are in the process of coming up with a budget for Fiscal Year 2022,” noted club moderator Elizabeth Thaibinh, Academy of Our Lady’s eighth- and ninth-grade religion teacher. According to CRS, 1 billion people have moved out of extreme poverty since 1990, and U.S.-sponsored international humanitarian and development aid has been a major factor in that.

Thaibinh told the students that Congress allocates half of 1% of the nation’s more than $4 trillion federal budget to poverty-reducing international aid, traditionally with strong bipartisan support.

“CRS uses a lot of foreign aid in their programs (overseas),” Thaibinh said. “If y’all can imagine all the CRS clubs throughout the United States writing their senators – the hope is that this will go through and that people will listen, because so few people actually write to our senators.”

Junior Asiah Richards, the club’s advocacy chair, urged her peers to include why the issue was important to them in their letters, and to thank the senators for their past efforts in the realm of humanitarian development. Richards said their letters didn’t have to be complicated, but making them personal was one way to make them stand out.

“For example, if this issue is really important to your faith, then you can say that in your email, or if someone in your family struggled with something related to the issue, you can put that in there as well,” Richards said.

“I really think it’s important for the youth to stand up for what we think is right and to raise awareness of different needs,” she added. “When it comes from youth, I feel like it affects (adults) differently.”

Global impact

The well-oiled CRS Club, which marks a reorganization of the Marrero high school’s Mission Club, is having an impact in large and small ways this school year. Its first major fundraising project will help LSU pre-med student Calli Nguyen, a 2018 Academy of Our Lady graduate, go on a medical mission trip to Costa Rica over the Christmas break to vaccinate residents against COVID-19.

At the meeting, the students brainstormed simple fundraising ideas that could be conducted during the school day, such as making keychains and bracelets and hosting lunchtime games and quizzes in the courtyard to educate their fellow students on humanitarian crises.

Senior Jolie Frazier, the club’s vice president, suggested inviting students to pay $1 to write a life-affirming quote on a sticky note and then paper a room at school with positivity.

“I’ve always had a passion for helping people,” Frazier said. “I figured that Mission Club – now CRS – was a really good way to release all that energy to help people, show empathy toward the poor and just help my community.”

Club president Alyssa Wood, a junior, reminded members to volunteer to weed the campus gardens in anticipation of the Nov. 4 open house, and to reflect on their actions as they put their hands in the ground.

“(In addition to beautifying the campus), this is an opportunity to be  in solidarity with those who have to raise their own food throughout the world,” Wood said. “We’re just doing it for a day; not forever.”

“I feel like we’re all children of God and that we should always be there for each other,” Wood added, “and, this club is fun! You’re just helping people and being kind to the world.”

There are currently two CRS clubs in the Archdiocese of New Orleans: at Academy of Our Lady and at Pope John Paul II (which founded its CRS Club last school year). To learn how to start a club at your high school, email Amelie Desormeaux, community engagement manager for CRS in Louisiana and Mississippi, at [email protected]. She can also be reached at  (337) 652-9391.

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