Helping out

St. Ignatius High School student Felicia Amoah, 17, says she always wanted to help but just couldn’t do it on her own.

The Grade 11 student had thought about volunteering before but felt shy to go and ask on her own. That changed on Friday when her teachers and classmates headed down the hill to give the Salvation Army on Cumberland Street a make over.

"I thought it was fun to do," Felicia said on Saturday. "Frankly I just wanted to help out. It’s something for the community. For myself, I don’t (volunteer) a lot so I thought doing this for a few days would help. It felt good."

When she decided to volunteer, she didn’t think many students would attend. To her surprised, more than a hundred students came to help on Friday and nearly 50 on Saturday, she said.

"I’m surprised to see so many people that I know here. I thought it was just going to be adults," she said.

Ted Vaillant, a teacher at St. Ignatius, said the idea of the make over started when his class wanted to make a mural for the Salvation Army as part of their school programming. They decided that they could do more by building more shelf space, paint the walls, clear out the backroom and put up a wall.

It gave the students a chance to get hands on experience and to help out their neighbour, he said.

Vaillant said he felt amazed by how much the students and staff stepped up to help.

"I heard a phrase that someone had called this a solutionary not a visionary," Vaillant said. "These young people are doing things like shortening a ceiling tile. They’ve never done that before. I think the feeling and the result is going to be great."

Maj. Mervyn Halvorsen, executive director of the Salvation Army Community and Residential Services, said the food bank needed renovations badly and would have cost more than $5,000 to do the work that the students and teachers did.

The work the teachers and students have done will make it much more organized in the food bank as well as easier to access, he said.

"It was really shabby in there," Halvorsen said. "It was more than greatly appreciated. It was a surprise when they first said it but we’re greatly pleased by the difference this is going to make."