By Erin Zafian ‘22
Each Lent, the Christian Social Action Club and the Campus Ministry Department challenge the entire STA community to participate in our Dime a Day program. Dime-a-Day reminds everyone to make small sacrifices throughout Lent to help bring about positive change for the less fortunate. During Lent, it is important to give up small things in your life to work towards becoming the best version of yourself in order to be ready for Easter. We began Lent with an Ash Wednesday prayer service, during which students watched a video of teachers sharing the things they would be giving up for Lent. The video concluded with information about the Dime-a-Day program and students were reminded that giving up one dime for each day of Lent is only a simple donation of four dollars. The small donation is like giving up one coffee from your favorite café over the course of Lent. However, even the smallest of sacrifices could help so many people.
This year, due to the pandemic, we at STA needed to “rethink” how we could and would do Dime-a-Day. We decided that our Dime-a-Day ‘21 campaign would be focused on hunger awareness in the forms of spiritual, emotional, and physical hunger.
Due to the pandemic and not being able to go serve at the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen (TASK), we decided that the proceeds of Dime-a-Day would benefit TASK so that they would be able to continue to provide meals for those in need. For years, our school has helped TASK by sending student volunteers on-site to serve at the soup kitchen. As a school we would pack lunches, in which students and faculty would gather in the cafeteria to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Unfortunately, due to CDC guidelines for soup kitchens, no food can be given out that is not prepared on-site, and no outside volunteers are allowed. However, we were determined to help TASK in any way that we could and so the idea of putting them as our charity of choice for Dime-a-Day was the perfect solution. TASK informed the STA community that our school’s support, no matter how small, was needed now more than ever due to the ongoing pandemic.
If the coronavirus has taught the world anything it would be that there is so much uncertainty from one day to the next. Now more than ever, it is important to have virtual components to everything set up just in case. To ensure that people would still be able to donate even if we weren’t physically in the building, on our website was a virtual donation site for Dime-a-Day. The platform TikTok has shown the world that it is more than just an app to show off your dance moves. Now the app is used to spread information to people from across the world in a matter of seconds. The platform was the perfect place to get people talking about the Dime-a-Day program. Students were asked to send in a video for the @stafightshunger page where videos were posted every day to keep people excited about Dime-a-Day. Even on weekends or days off, students were still being updated and being encouraged to donate.
Dime-a-Day is not a contest. Rather, it is a total community effort to work together, to help the poor, and to “change” ourselves. Everyone in the STA community from teachers to administrators to coaches to nurses to maintenance works to cafeteria staff to students and to families were invited to contribute whatever they could. As a school, we were able to raise $2,000 dollars for the Trenton Area Soup Kitchen, which will provide food for many families and people in need.