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A sea of students comes flooding through the doors of Blessed Sacrament School in Albany, hauling peanut butter.

The kids laugh as they carry boxes filled to the brim with snacks and food items. Some race each other back and forth, seeing who can bring the donation items out the fastest. Two friends get together to carry a large box, each gripping a side as they waddle down the hall. As they approach the collection tables, one shouts in warning, “This pasta is heavy!” 

The crowd is a mixture of kids from All Saints Catholic Academy, Mater Christi and St. Thomas the Apostle schools. The boxes of food are collected donations for Blessed Sacrament’s food pantry, which all three schools helped gather as part of Catholic Schools Week, which ran from Jan. 29-Feb. 2. 

On Feb. 2, students celebrated their last day of the week by busing their donations over to Blessed Sacrament and dropping the collections in a massive pile inside the school’s gym. 

Alexandra Morazan, principal at Blessed Sacrament School, said the students were originally going to bring their donations directly to the food pantry shelves, but realized that there were going to be too many items squeezed into the space. It was the best possible problem to have, she said. 

“We’ve just been taken aback by the support,” Morazan told The Evangelist. “We feel very strongly that our students providing service to the community is one of the big pillars of what we should be doing. These are the teachings of Jesus: help each other.”

Students, faculty and parents sort through food donations during the drop off for the Blessed Sacrament food panty on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, at Blessed Sacrament School in Albany, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist

The food collection itself was an unplanned endeavor. It was the students at Blessed Sacrament who came forward and asked if they could help collect food items for the pantry as part of their service project for Catholic Schools Week after noticing the pantry was in need. Due to its close proximity to the school, students are often helpers in unloading dropped-off donations to the food pantry shelves, Morazan said. Over the past few months, many have started asking why the shelves are so bare. Sister Patricia Lynch, RSM, previous principal of Blessed Sacrament and current director of the church’s food pantry, said that it’s been difficult to keep the shelves stocked the past few months. 

The pantry’s location in Albany is statistically impoverished, lending the food pantry to have high traffic on a normal basis, but the church is also the closest food pantry in walking distance to the Ramada Inn on Watervliet Ave. Ext., where immigrants and refugees are being bused from New York City to stay.

“It’s a tremendous privilege” to help the coming families in need, Morazan said, “but I would say our food pantry is doing between 3-4 times its usual business.”

The food pantry receives a truck drop-off from the Northeastern Regional Food Bank once every two weeks, and there are some items that are on the shelf that day and gone by closing. While food drives help to supplement supplies in between drops, it’s hard to collect more expensive items, such as cereal boxes or diapers, when local families are struggling to afford the items themselves. 

A number of students at Blessed Sacrament School are immigrants or first-generation Americans themselves: “This a reality for them,” Morazan said. “Our students are from this neighborhood, and we are an impoverished school ourselves, but our students have taken it upon themselves. They elected that their service project for Catholic Schools Week would be to help out Sister Patricia.”

Mater Christi School 8th-grader Oscar Kirchman helps sort food donations during the drop off for the Blessed Sacrament food panty on Friday, Feb. 2, 2024, at Blessed Sacrament School in Albany, N.Y. Cindy Schultz for The Evangelist

The school set a goal of 1,000 items for the pantry, an admirable task for a student body of 130. At a principal’s meeting, Morazan mentioned the students’ goal. The other Albany Catholic schools hopped in, asking if they could donate to the project and unite their student bodies toward the goal.

All Saints, Mater Christi, St. Thomas the Apostle and the Academy of the Holy Names helped collect food items, and CYO basketball committed to donating profits from weekend games as a donation to the food pantry.

“It’s the first time I felt like all the (Albany) Catholic elementary schools were working to a similar goal of teaching kids that Catholic Schools Week — yes, it’s about having fun — it’s more about doing for others,” said Traci Johnson, principal at All Saints Catholic Academy. “I’m very proud. We have spirit day once a month and it was a completely different feeling. With the kids being able to help carry the food, bag the food, organize the food, count, it has a completely different feeling than our solo days.”

In the end, Morazan estimates close to 7,000 items were collected for the food pantry.

“I’m so proud of our students for taking on this very lofty goal, and really seeing how their initiative has sparked other people to join the cause,” she said. “This snowballed a lot faster than we anticipated but that’s a beautiful thing, that just goes to show we’re all looking out for our neighbors.”

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