Loyola Academy Students Embrace Holiday Giving - Donate Over $30,000 in Gifts and Food

Loyola Academy students embraced the holiday season by donating $22,000 in Christmas gifts and $10,000 in food to Catholic Charities’ Sponsor-a-Family program.

Students worked together in their homeroom classrooms to collect the gifts and food donations. Each homeroom selected its own family, deciding on the size of the family and what kind of gifts to provide each family member.

Altogether, the approximately 2,000 students at Loyola Academy, a Wilmette, IL Jesuit preparatory high school, collected gifts and food for 384 individuals from 94 families who receive services from Catholic Charities.

The students at Loyola Academy are among the many people and groups who help make a difference for those relying on Catholic Charities. Since its inception in 1917, the organization has been assisting those in need, regardless of faith, age, ethnicity or background, with the goal of bringing hope to the hopeless in the city of Chicago and its suburbs.

During the holidays, struggling families need hope and help more than ever. That’s why Catholic Charities initiated the Celebration of Giving. Communities and individuals find various means of contributing to the program--through Sponsor-a-Family gift and food drives like the one at Loyola, individual donations or toy drives. Each holiday season, through the generosity of others, thousands of children and families served by Catholic Charities receive gifts, food, new clothes and other much-needed necessities.

Helping people in need for 95 years, Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Chicago is one of the largest private not-for-profit social service agencies in the Midwest, annually assisting more than one million persons in Cook and Lake counties without regard to religious, ethnic or economic background. Catholic Charities fulfills the Church’s role in the mission of charity by providing compassionate, competent, professional services that strengthen and support individuals, families and communities.