Every year, beginning on the last Sunday in January, Catholic schools around the country celebrate Catholic education during Catholic Schools Week. This year, January 26 through February 1, Bellarmine-Jefferson High School, located at 465 E. Olive Avenue in Burbank, will join in the festivities with a number of activities to help the school focus on the value Catholic education provides to young people and its contributions to the church, community and nation.
The theme for this year’s Catholic Schools Week is “Communities of Faith, Knowledge and Service.” For their school-wide project, Bell-Jeff students will be illustrating their prayer intentions using collages, drawing or photographs. Then the school’s Campus Ministry will put all of the pieces from each class together to create one large banner that will span the first floor hallway and will say “Lord Hear Our Prayers.” Students also will begin the week with a special prayer service to express their faith on Monday, January 27, at 2 p.m. in St. Eleanor Hall.
As part of its service to the community during the week, Bell-Jeff High School will begin its annual clothing drive on Monday, January 27. Students, faculty and staff will be asked to bring in gently-used clothing for people of all ages to be donated to MEND (Meet Each Need with Dignity), an organization that was co-founded by Bell-Jeff alumni Ed Rose. MEND’s mission is to break the bonds of poverty by providing basic human needs and a pathway to self-reliance. The clothing drive, organized by the school’s National Honor Society, will run through February 13. The school’s Key Club is also organizing a clothing drive to support Aéropostale’s Teens for Jeans program, which donates gently-used jeans to homeless teens. This drive will end on February 3.
On Thursday, January 30, the school’s choir will perform at Blessed Sacrament School, located at 6641 West Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, beginning at 8:45 a.m. As part of Blessed Sacrament’s Catholic Schools Week celebration, the Bell-Jeff Choir will sing four songs, including “Seasons of Love” from Rent and “All that Jazz” from Chicago. Then from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. in the cafeteria, Bell-Jeff ASB and Campus Ministry students as well as 8th graders from St. Robert Bellarmine School will be making bagged lunches for the Burbank Temporary Aid Center (BTAC). BTAC, in addition to providing daily sack lunches for the homeless, is dedicated to providing the poor, working poor, and homeless of the local community with basic services they need to live with dignity. Bags will be decorated, sandwiches will be made and sack lunches will be assembled for the following day’s lunch delivery.
