CHARLOTTE — Teenagers at St. Peter Church were busy recently for the parish’s annual “St. Peter Teen Summer Service Week.”
More than 50 teenagers performed community service projects all over Charlotte July 17-21, including cleaning up a creek, helping out at the Boys and Girls Club and at McCreesh Place, doing landscape work and building a ramp, collecting items to recycle and repair donated bicycles, and visiting Holy Angels in Belmont, among other efforts.
Each day also featured Mass, prayer and reflection time at the church. New this year was a “Take a Stand Lemon AID stand” in which they publicly advocated for a different social justice issue each day.
Every day around lunchtime the teens displayed information and had interactive activities outside the front of the church on Tryon Street about topics such as protecting the environment, serving the homeless, and aiding refugees. In one example of the new effort, the teens decorated pillowcases to be given to Room in the Inn guests later this year, and they handed out instructions to make blessing bags for the homeless with bags for people to return to St. Peter’s or give to their less fortunate neighbors.
— Photos provided by Cathy Chiappetta and Celia Denlea
