Kaitlyn Jones, left, and sister Lindsey Jones, a freshman at Sacred Heart, pose with their sidewalk art for the virtual Day of Sharing on Wednesday, April 22. Photo courtesy of Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart

For students, faculty and staff at the Buffalo Academy of the Sacred Heart, service, which functions as a pillar of the school environment, took on a new form and significance amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

For over a decade, springtime has featured Sacred Hearts annual Day of Sharing, which entails a day of school-wide community service throughout Western New York. Under normal circumstances, students, administrators, teachers, parents and alumnae of Sacred Heart commemorate the Day of Sharing by venturing into the community and volunteering at sites such as nursing homes, hospitals and organizations serving individuals with disabilities throughout the region.

As with so much else, however, the havoc of COVID-19 inevitably disrupted and altered Sacred Hearts traditional Day of Sharing plans for the spring of 2020. With more than a month of successful distance learning under their belts, the leaders of Sacred Heart opted for a virtual Day of Sharing on Wednesday, April 22, rather than canceling the event altogether.

We had a Zoom meeting where we decided that we werent going to cancel, that it was too important to the integrity of the school and what we do, Bridget McGuinness of Sacred Hearts campus ministry department said. So we started thinking about things that we could do within the confines of best public health practice, while still doing something.

To commence their day of service, the Sacred Heart community hosted an assembly and prayer service over Zoom, before students individually embarked on their volunteering adventures. Although scattered throughout Western New York, all those participating in the virtual Day of Sharing wore their Sacred Heart class T-shirts, and documented their projects with photos and videos to share over school social media.

Of course, for this Day of Sharing, the service opportunities differed from those traditionally offered. Perhaps most critically, all options took social distancing and New York PAUSE parameters into consideration. The Sacred Heart community, nevertheless, still found innovative ways to magnify its Franciscan values with service.

I work really hard to keep my finger on the pulse of social service stuff regularly, McGuinness said. I was really trying to pay attention to all the kinds of little random acts of kindness, and we decided not to make them random acts. We wanted to make them intentional acts of kindness.

For artistically inclined students, volunteer activities included performing in a Zoom-based coffeehouse concert, building a bird feeder from recycled materials and knitting or crocheting baby blankets. Student athletes, meanwhile, could employ their talents by recording a childrens sports tutorial video or producing a short home workout video.

To take advantage of the fact that students could serve from home, this Day of Sharing also offered opportunities such as creating artwork for a neighbor, writing uplifting chalk messages on the sidewalk and planting bulbs or vegetables. In addition to the more out-of-the-box options, many students addressed the basic needs of their communities by donating to Little Free Food Pantries throughout the region.

Although the name Day of Sharing implies a 24-hour window of giving, Sacred Heart has extended its initiative to include an online giving campaign to assist students families in continuing to afford their daughters education. Given the financial hardships that the COVID-19 pandemic has brought to many, the online giving campaign has prioritized helping students return in the fall of 2020.

[The online giving campaign] was born out of another act of kindness, McGuinness said. Some of our families are confronting financial pictures that they didnt ever expect to confront, like lost jobs and decreased income. We always have such a strong parent presence for Day of Sharing, so this was a way we put out for our parents to still participate and lift up other families.

Donations to Sacred Hearts online giving campaign will benefit an emergency tuition assistance fund through June 30, 2020. With those funds, financially vulnerable families will receive aid to ease the burden of tuition payments. To make a donation to Sacred Hearts online giving campaign, visit http://www.sacredheartacademy.org/apps/pages/make-a-gift.

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Sacred Heart has remote day of service - Amherst Bee