Kids Doing Good: Prince of Peace School group has love of serving others

As a little girl in Kentucky, Emily Burress and her three best friends loved doing projects with their small Catholic school’s service club.

“The four of us were very committed to our little club,” Burress said. “We would sign up for all the projects.”

Those grade-school friends grew up to have careers caring for others. Three, including Burress, are nurses, and the fourth is a social worker.

“I think it is so important to help young kids develop a love for service,” Burress said.

Now with four daughters, Burress realized it isn’t easy to find organized service activities for kids. With her childhood experience in mind, she started a service club at her daughter’s school, Prince of Peace Catholic School in Taylors.

“We have an old-fashioned bulletin board and the kids have autonomy to pick and choose what they’d like to participate in,” Burress said.

From baking chocolate chip cookies for incarcerated people to volunteering at Serenity Place, which helps moms who are struggling with addiction, the Service Club offers fourth through eighth graders monthly opportunities to help others.

“Cookies for Kairos was a lot of fun,” sixth grade student Emma Briles said. “The six of us baked hundreds of cookies to give to men and women in jail. Hopefully it brings them a little joy.”

For seventh grader Caroline Bagwell, the Service Club is a chance to take time out of her day to focus on others.

“If you have soccer practice and other things in the afternoon, you can kind of forget about helping people,” Bagwell said. “So, it is really nice to have a specific time to help others instead of just doing stuff for yourself.”

Since it started last year, the Service Club has volunteered for Cookies for Kairos, Serenity Place, Harvest Hope Food Bank and Birthright of Greenville. As Covid restrictions ease, they are looking forward to visiting nursing homes and serving in other ways.

When they were leaving Harvest Hope last month, Burress heard an eighth grader say, “We should do this every Saturday.”

Briles agreed. “Volunteering makes me want to go back and help more,” she said.

Steve Cunningham, principal of Prince of Peace, takes a lot of pride in seeing the students develop a love for service.

“The kids have really enjoyed it,” Cunningham said. “They feel a sense of accomplishment and see the impact that people working together can make. It has been a big benefit to the school in moving us forward in service learning and has helped kids understand how we are called to help others.”

The club has definitely answered that call and is instilling a love of service in future generations, including Burress’ fifth grade daughter Caroline.

“It feels good to help others, and it is cool that I’m in the Service Club like my mom when she was little,” she said.

Sitting with her daughter and other members of the Service Club, Emily Burress recited the Mother Teresa quote: “Faith in action is love and love in action is service.”

“At the end of the day it comes down to love,” Burress said. “That is a cheesy thing to say, but how can we serve our neighbors through the love of Jesus? It is nice that they go to this really amazing small Catholic school, but it is important to be exposed to the needs of others and recognize the ways that we are able to help.”

This article originally appeared on Greenville News: Kids Doing Good: Prince of Peace School group has love of service