Viatorian Associate Deborah Perez has worked tirelessly for the past few years leading a program at St. Viator Parish School in Las Vegas called “homeless lunch.”
Pre-Associate Deborah Perez and Br. Rob Robertson, CSV, work together at the food bank
Each week a different grade in the school spends time during the day making sandwiches that will be distributed to the homeless population in the city.
Deborah had a dream to take it one step further and have the older students experience a large scale food distribution center for the hungry.
That dream became a reality this month when the Viatorian Community provided a grant from its social justice fund to cover expenses involved in transporting, feeding and making a donation to the largest food bank in southern Nevada — Three Square — allowing the seventh grade class (all 61 of them) to spend the day preparing meals for hungry children.
Students tour the massive food distribution warehouse
Three Square is the largest food service network in southern Nevada. Through its network of agency partners, its food distribution programs feed more than 100,000 men, women, children and seniors at risk of hunger — each month. Of those, nearly 40 percent are children, officials say.
Students from St. Viator School and their chaperones — including Associate Rosy Hartz and Br. Rob Robertson, CSV, spent the day at Three Square. Their tour started with seeing its massive food distribution warehouse, before they rolled up their sleeves to prepare food boxes to be distributed to after school programs for 4,100 local children who otherwise would have no meal for the day.
“At the end of the day, our students responded that this was a highlight of their year,” said Br. Rob, who serves as a guidance counselor at the school. “They learned so much about hunger and service that they can’t wait to go again.”