IMPACT Weeks bring new opportunity

Freshmen replaced trees in the prayer garden like the one pictured during Impact Week.

Freshmen replaced trees in the prayer garden like the one pictured during Impact Week.

One thing that is always on a student’s mind, or at least is in the back of the mind, is service hours. Students are always scrambling come late March to finish up the last couple hours of required service. Now, with the IMPACT Week program, this won’t be a problem.

The IMPACT Week program is a new approach to service-learning and retreats for freshmen, sophomores and juniors. It provides a reflective learning experience of Catholic social teaching. “We want the students to come out with a better understanding of Catholic social teaching and understand the impact that God’s creation has on the world and to us,” says Mr. Gregory Welch, who is the campus minister.

According to Mount Carmel’s website,  “Carmelite educators… have been given the responsibility of assisting our young men in living out this important part of their four year journey at Mount Carmel.”  This new program responds to the school’s five year strategic plan to “heighten our Catholic and Carmelite identity and mission” and to “expand our service learning opportunities for students to express their faith in action.”

The IMPACT program was first implemented at Crespi Carmelite High School in Los Angeles and also was  recently adopted by Salpointe Catholic High School in Tucson – so Mount Carmel is the third Carmelite school to establish this program. The main goal is to get away from counting the number of hours, but instead get students engaged in helping and fulfilling the mission of God.

During IMPACT Weeks, students are not in regular classes, but rather “work alongside their teachers and classmates during several days of service-learning and one day of recollection.” This combination of educative, service, and reflective components “provides an opportunity for building relationships during an experience that deepens students’ appreciation of the Carmelite charism of prayer, community, and service.”

During  impact week from October 6  through 9, the freshmen focused on gifts of God’s creation and responsibility to care for and maintain the responsibility of that gift. The sophomore IMPACT Week, in late January, will focus on hunger and poverty.  They will work with many food banks and pantries around the Chicagoland area. Lastly, the junior IMPACT Week will focus on the dignity of a person, as students will be serving in nursing homes, homeless shelters, and veterans centers throughout the Chicago area.