At the end of June, 14 students from Wayland and Natick took part in Good Shepherd Parish’s Boston Summer Service and Immersion Trip. It was a great experience for everyone involved.
During our trip, we volunteered at a number of places in and around Boston – Noonday Farm (a self-sufficient organic farm that provides food for service agencies), Haley House (a Catholic worker house with locations in the South End and Roxbury providing many services including a soup kitchen, food pantry, low-income housing, job training and a cafe), Pine Street Inn (the largest center for homeless services in Massachusetts), the Commonwealth Tenants Association, and other places that help the less fortunate in the Boston area.
We also heard about the services offered by Boston Healthcare for the Homeless and Greater Boston Legal Services.
We stayed at the Chinese Catholic Pastoral Center on Tyler Street, where we reflected together, ate some of our meals, and celebrated Mass with Father Jim.
Some of the most meaningful experiences for us were when we got to interact with people at the sites. At the Haley House Soup Kitchen and the “mobile food pantry” (provided by the Greater Boston Food Bank) at Commonwealth Tenants Association, we had the chance to hear about the lives of the people we were serving. It was a really great experience to help others directly, even if we were just carrying home their groceries, or preparing a meal.
Personally, I loved getting to know the people who worked in these places for a living. It was really inspiring for me to meet people who have dedicated their lives to helping others. It was also just as inspiring to see the reaction these workers got from the people who they serve.
The whole experience was wonderful for us and everyone involved. We are all very grateful to everyone who supported us in so many ways – the chaperones, the people at the places we visited, and Mary Lou Bozza, our youth minister. We couldn’t have done it without everyone’s support and help!
Samantha Keating is a member of Wayland High School’s Class of 2014.