Freeport, NY – Five members of Saint Raphael Academy Lasallian Youth spent their April vacation week volunteering at The De La Salle School in Freeport, Long Island, NY, a San Miguel School for boys in grades 5-8. Brother Thomas Casey, former principal of Saint Raphael Academy, is the executive director and founder of the De La Salle School.

SRA students Andy Li, Dan Arteaga, Alyssa Fletcher, Maureen Doyle and Marisol Durango assisted in classrooms and with the afterschool program, where they tutored students and assisted them with homework. They also organized and led a mini retreat with each grade level and assisted with an Earth Day activity in which the whole school cleaned the playground, weeded the school’s flower beds and brought recyclables to the recycling center.

During the week, the Saints had a free day and traveled into New York City to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art. In the afternoon, they met with Lasallian Youth from Bishop Loughlin High School in Brooklyn. The combined Lasallian Youth groups gave out food and talked with people as part of Bishop Loughlin’s Random Acts of Kindness activity on the streets of New York. Afterwards, both Lasallian Youth groups had a chance to get to know one another over dinner.

Saint Raphael Academy students were accompanied by teacher Bridget Taylor and Lasallian Youth moderator Nancy Benoit.