The students at The Calais School participated in our 6th year community service projects sponsored by The American Cancer Association and St. Clare’s Hospital Cancer Care. We will be working with Relay for Life of Central Morris County and St. Clare’s Cancer Care Survivor Day Celebration. These events give communities a chance to celebrate the lives of people who have battled cancer as well as those who have passed away. In addition, these celebrations are opportunities to create community awareness on the need to fight back against the disease.

To help with this worthy cause, students decorated “survival bags” and filled them with items donated by parents, guardians, and staff members.   Some of the items that the bags are filled with include pocket-size hand moisturizer, anti-bacterial hand sanitizer, pocket-size packs of tissues, granola bars or any other healthy bar, lip balm, and survivor and celebration bracelets. We are also extremely grateful to everyone who donated items to fill our “survival bags.”

Students who worked on the project shared their thoughts about painting their community service. Chester said he was, “happy to be able to give hope.”  Omar felt “good, because I know I’m making somebody smile” and Andrew  felt “honored to make someone happy and give faith.” And Caroline reported, “It made me feel good inside knowing these would help people and make them smile.”

We are very proud of the enthusiasm our students display for this community service project. We would also like to give a special thank you to Mrs. Vitaletti and Mrs. Liberato for organizing this opportunity to give back to our community. They will be representing The Calais School at the events in May and June.