Community Service

Justice in Action is at the heart of Forest Ridge School, both as an institution and as a community. All Sacred Heart schools in the U.S. ascribe to the same set of Goals and Criteria with the third Goal stating that we educate students to "a social awareness which impels to action."

Within that Goal there are five Criteria:
1.) The school educates to a critical consciousness that leads its total community to analyze and reflect on the values of society and to act for justice;
2.) The school offers all its members opportunities for direct service and advocacy and instills a life-long commitment to service;
3.) The school is linked in a reciprocal manner with ministries among people who are poor, marginalized and suffering from injustice;
4.) In our multicultural world, the school prepares and inspires students to be active, informed, and responsible citizens locally, nationally, and globally;
5.) The school teaches respect for creation and prepares students to be stewards of the earth's resources.

Having recently completed a self-study and hosted a visiting team of other Sacred Heart educators, we know that we "walk our talk." The concept of social responsibility permeates both our academic program and our co-curricular program. Here is a sampling of how we address stewardship:

• St. Martin de Porres: We recently completed our 15th year of providing a hot, homemade dinner once a month for the 250 men served at St. Martin de Porres shelter. Each month a middle school grade is paired with a high school class and students prepare homemade meat sauce, bake cookies, purchase fresh fruit for a salad, make cash donations to purchase milk, rolls, pasta, etc., help put the meal together, and serve it at the shelter. Each class has two turns per year, the alumnae are responsible for September, and the faculty/staff cover June. We run a Network service project during the summer, and that group covers either July or August.
• Twice each year the entire high school spends a full day doing hands-on community service. Sites for the most recent high school service day included St. Martin de Porres, Northwest Harvest (both their warehouse & Cherry St. food ban), Union Gospel Mission (Women's Shelter, Men's Shelter, Bargain Store), Providence Hospitality House, Church of Mary Magdalene, Seattle Parks and Recreation (three different sites), Washington Trails, Camp Don Bosco, Camp Hamilton, and the Forest Ridge garden which supplies food to the St. James Kitchen.
  Each Middle School Grade (5th - 8th) has a year-long community service relationship with a social service agency.
• The fifth grade works with Eastside Baby Corner. Students go to the Baby Corner three or four times each year in small groups to sort clothes, prepare gift bags, etc. The fifth grade then hosts a "baby shower" at the end of the year to benefit Eastside Baby Corner.
• The sixth grade works with The Foodbank @ St. Mary's. Students go to the food bank three or more times each year to "work on the line" or sort food. The sixth grade coordinates our all school food drive each November to benefit St. Mary's.
•  The seventh grade works with Angeline's Day Shelter for Women. Students go once a year in small groups to serve a meal to the women. They serve a total of nine meals throughout the year and each time the entire class makes sandwiches and prepares food and one group takes the meal and serves it to the women. The seventh grade hosts a school wide "Pacific Rim Festival" which raises money that they use to provide the meals at Angeline's. The Angeline's staff visits the seventh grade class each year to share their ministry and the seventh grade religion classes have a unit on Homelessness in order to understand their service work.
• The eighth grade class works with a variety of service agencies. These girls study Catholic Social Teaching in religion class for one trimester and then go off campus for two trimesters as part of their religion class once a week for a long-term service placement in either a school or service agency. Students work at: The Food Bank at St. Mary's, Martin Luther King Dayhome, L'Arche Activity Workshop, St. Madeleine Sophie School, St. Joseph School, Issaquah, Steven's Elementary (Seattle Public), and a variety of Bellevue Public Schools.
• United Way- faculty/staff participation
• Food drives- several times per year to benefit St. Mary's Food Bank, HopeLink, and Northwest Harvest
• Giving Tree- R.O.A.R of Washington provides us with ‘wish tags' for the youth they serve
• Outdoor Ed Program- includes day trips, overnights, and week-long trips; purpose is both to expose students to activities and environments they may not be familiar with (rock climbing, snow shoeing, camping) and to develop an appreciation for and commitment to preserving our natural resources. Recent extended trips have included the Florida Everglades, Yellowstone, and Kino Bay.
• Global Days- once a year in Middle School and High School with a different focus each year. This fall the Middle School focus was on hunger and the world's food supply and last year the High School focus was on sustainability.
• Clubs- the High School offers students the opportunity to participate in clubs once a week, during the school day. These clubs are student-initiated and student-led. Some offerings that fall within the area of stewardship include Interact (affiliated with Rotary International) and Earth Service Corps.
• Student-initiated projects in response to specific needs - students have organized fund-raising projects to provide relief for areas hit by natural disasters, to provide scholarships for girls in Africa, and to increase awareness about health issues such as breast cancer.
• Habitat for Humanity- one recent spring break the students sponsored a trip to Jacksonville, Florida, to build with Habitat for Humanity; subsequent trips have included those to New Orleans in the years after Hurricane Katrina.
• Speaker series- high school students have a Women in Leadership program 3 out of 4 Thursdays a month. Speakers have shared their experiences in a variety of fields including Peace Corps, YMCA, setting up service projects in Africa, etc. Cokie Roberts, a nationally known political analyst and graduate of Sacred Heart schools, also spoke to students this year.
• Student conferences- Among the conferences have been: PNAIS Student Diversity Symposium, the People of Color Conference in Boston and Forest Ridge again hosted its annual Middle School Ethics Conference for seventh and eighth graders from area schools. Students also attend conferences sponsored by the Network of Sacred Heart Schools.
• Class projects- these might include things like a "Baby Shower" for the Eastside Baby Corner, fixing lunch for the women at Angeline's Day Shelter, selling candles made by members of the L'Arche community, holding a garage sale and/or car wash for Children's Hospital, etc.
•  Senior Seminar Service- as a component of the senior seminar program, each senior is required to complete a minimum of 30 hours of self-initiated service.
• Summer opportunities- for nearly a decade, the school has organized Computers for Uganda. In this project, Forest Ridge and public school students refurbish donated desktop computers, work with Rotary International, hold fund-raisers to help cover the cost of shipping the computers (packed in donated clothing), and then spend three weeks in Uganda setting up computer labs at schools and training teachers. Summer service trips to South Africa (Habitat for Humanity) India and New Zealand/Australia have taken place recently. In addition to international service projects, Middle School and High School students also have the opportunity to participate in a variety of one to two-week projects sponsored by the Network of Sacred Heart Schools. These include programs tutoring inner-city children, assisting in the job training of developmentally disabled adults, building a house through Habitat for Humanity, working on a CSA farm, learning how to minister through clowning, providing ESL tutoring for immigrant children, etc. Some high school students also do international service through their churches and/or organized programs such as Rustic Pathways.
• Peer tutors- many high school students, both formally through National Honor Society and informally, give of their time to tutor younger students.
• Raven's Wing- this is a parents' community service group that offers support for families in our community in times of need