You can keep the dream alive.
Your sponsorship will keep their dream alive.
Christabelith, 14, just a few days from her graduation from eighth grade, said that following this basic commandment is hard, especially in a place like Camden, ravished as it is by the effects of poverty and neglect. But, on a sunny June day, she and the other eighth graders enjoyed themselves with kindergarten students at an end-of-the-year picnic held in a park near the Camden waterfront a block from the school. Each eighth grader has a kindergarten buddy for the whole year.
"It's really created a family atmosphere,", said Arlene Zalewski, who has taught kindergarten at the school since 1988. "They go out of their way to think of the little kids on their birthdays and holidays. It goes the other way too."
"Family" is a word heard often at Sacred Heart School, a haven of safety and caring for the children of South Camden. Once, this area of 41,000 people had six full-fledged, K-8 parish grammar schools and two parish high schools. Today, the only parish-run school left is Sacred Heart.
The school opened in September 2003 for its eighty-third year with 240 children.
The children today are mostly black and Baptist; the children then were all
white and Catholic. But, like their predecessors over nearly a century, they
are the children of good, resourceful people who care deeply about their children's
education.
Today, however, the building sits within smelling distance of a sewer plant and a trash burner, with trucks rumbling by on nearby Broadway and prostitutes plying their trade a block away. Still, said Sacred Heart pastor Fr. Michael Doyle, the children "strive for their dream with admirable resilience and joy of spirit."
The school offers the children what it can. It has dedicated teachers, good computers, and soon will have a greenhouse, an "outdoor classroom" built by young volunteers dedicated to working in the inner city. "We strive to educate these children in spite of all that assails them, to draw out as the word literally means," Said Fr. Doyle.
Sacred Heart school survives mostly on the generosity of people, parishioners and others, who believe in its mission. They volunteer or teach for low pay, or they sponsor children so that the school can keep tuition low and not be dependent on the Diocese of Camden to stay open.
They are people like 28-year-old Jennifer Harris, last year's eighth-grade teacher, who began volunteering at the school at age 17. "I love it, I do," she said. "People are dedicated to what they do, making a difference in the lives of children. We stress morals and values so that a child would get a well-rounded education. Many families have had all their children here."
Her mother, Ernestine Harris, is the school's longtime secretary and music teacher. "Our kids feel secure," she said. "We're surrogate moms and dads. They feel safe, they can confide in us. They get a lot of encouragement. We keep telling them they can do it."
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Nine of the 28 graduates got scholarships to Camden Catholic High School, and most of the others are headed for one of Camden's magnet public high schools or county vocational schools. Their ambitions are varied: doctor, lawyer, artist, teacher, nurse, athlete, writer.
They mostly thanked Pepe Piperno, who has chosen Sacred Heart as his vehicle
to give something back to his native city after making a successful career
as a businessman.
Piperno is one of the many sponsors who supplement the tuition of the students -- $900 for one child, $1000 for two or more - so it can be kept affordable for the neighborhood But he sponsored the entire class of 2004 for eight years, and each student has a mentor from his store, SBAR's in Moorestown.
He plans to stay in touch with them in high school and has promised that he will provide enough money for them to attend in-state colleges. "With inner cities, kids don't have a shot unless they get a good education. I've always believed everybody has a genius somewhere, and we've just got to figure out what it is."
This year, Sacred Heart needed 2000 sponsors , and by the end of June had made its goal with a few to spare. At $300 per sponsor, It takes nearly eight sponsors to cover the cost of one child - the difference between the $2900 yearly cost of educating them and the average $650 per child tuition the school receives.
The overwhelmed public school district of Camden, which has more than $12,000 per pupil to spend, is sadly still not able to provide its students with what these students and their families want more than anything: a safe, nurturing environment where they can learn academics and values without fear. Pepe Piperno said that it took him awhile to absorb this reality. "In all my years of school," he said, "I can remember girls, candy apples, recess, playing, favorite teachers. Never would I ever say I'd like being at a school because it was safe."
Said Father Doyle: "The existence of Sacred Heart School and its struggles in the face of the forces that oppress it, cry out that something is wrong in a nation of generous people, if the children of a free society are condemned to bear with so much."
But it is also a beacon of hope, he said, "The hope that springs eternal
in the eyes of our children...Who has the right to trample the garden that
God planned for their play? But we can tend to the garden of their imagination
and we commit ourselves to save that garden as much as we can."