Moeller Reaches Out

Community service has always been a core component of Moeller High School. Rooted in the Marianist faith, Moeller’s goal is to develop altruistic young men throughout their journey during high school. Serving others is something expected from each student. Freshmen, Sophomores, and Juniors must complete 10 Blue hours (involving service at the school). Seniors are expected to provide 35 gold hours (service supporting the wider community).

As you can imagine, Covid has brought on new changes to Moeller's community service. The expected hourly service commitment has been shortened to adapt to the fewer opportunities accessible.

Mrs. Emma Stiver works in the campus ministry office as Coordinator of Community Service. She has been working in her first year at Moeller to overcome the difficulties of serving the community, but without the ability to be close to them.

Moeller’s notable Christmas on Campus had to be changed, but hope is not lost. It has now been moved to Corryville Catholic, where Moeller students can join their little buddies at their own school. Little Buddies is an afterschool program where Moeller students meet at Corryville Catholic to tutor and hangout with younger students. According to Mrs. Stiver, this year, the program has been changed to an online format, for the students and their Moeller mentors to meet once or twice a month. Jacob Carrington, a senior participating in little buddies, noted, “I think the program is starting to fail because many students do not have the technology to proceed from home.”

Though the Little Buddies program, which is based on close contact and personal relationships with younger students, may struggle through these tough times, Moeller still pulled off a successful Thanksgiving canned food drive.

The season of giving came in a little slower this year, but was to be expected. According to Mrs. Stiver, mentor groups came in with a whopping 900 boxes of basic goods goes to St. Vincent DePaul to distribute to families in need. Last year’s remarkable tally of 1300 boxes was sadly not met for many reasons. Even though many students were sick with COVID and quarantining (anywhere between 200 and 300 students were remote learning from home on any given day of collection week), we were still able to churn out a good amount for the adversity we were faced with.

Moeller’s open house is a yearly event for prospective grade school students to tour Moeller’s campus and learn what the school has to is offer. Each prospective family is partnered with faculty recommended, student tour guides.

According to Mrs. Stiver, "The second open house was cancelled. The first one was going so well. We invited 300 families to the first one. The second open house was going to be more casual, but was sadly was cancelled due the rise in Covid cases.” Being apart of open house myself, I can say that the first one was special and fun to be apart of.

The outlook for next year’s community service opportunities is promising. With high hopes for a Covid free year, YPC is looking to make a comeback.