When the students at P.S. 16 wanted to do more for the community, they might not have realized what they were getting themselves into.
“These children, fortunately, have self-motivation,” said Marleen O’Connor, a guidance counselor at the Sussex Street school and coordinator for the help program. In the middle of orchestrating a slightly chaotic project in the school’s auditorium, she had a chance to talk about the effort. “The children today really do care about each other and they want to help,” she said.
That help was on display when two dozen students recently gathered together bags of soap, shampoo, razors and toothpaste to present to residents of the York Street Project, a Downtown center that provides shelter, counseling, child care and education for the resident homeless and poor.
The students carried out a dozen “acts of kindness” from Feb. 2 to Mar. 21. The initiative came from BJ’s Wholesale, a nationwide chain of wholesale supermarkets, which selects schools it will partner with each year. This year, they chose 118 schools around the nation. BJ’s, which has a store in Jersey City, decided on P.S. 16 as one of the schools for 2000-01. BJ’s will award the school with $1,000, which O’Connor said will go toward more community service. Proctor & Gamble also helped by supplying the $200 worth of hygiene products.
Clutching a bottle of Skintimate Shaving Gel for women, Student Council President Brittany Bethea, 13, said that she and her classmates wanted to do more for people, over a longer period of time. But there was an additional benefit from her actions.
“I think it will help other people notice that you have to help other people,” she said.
Besides the hygiene-product effort, students also produced cards to bring to a local hospital, and created a gigantic quilt that now hangs in the auditorium that serves as a reminder of their kindness effort.
That project had some other benefits.
“Derrick,” asked O’Connor of seventh grader Derrick Hicks, “do you know how to sew now?”
Derrick smiled and nodded, and later spoke of why he enjoys helping.
“It’s fun to do,” he said, “because it goes out to people who deserve it and need it more than we do.”
O’Connor said that many of the children have stayed after school and come in during lunch to pitch in. One of the biggest problems the school faces, she said, is having too many kids who want to help.
“They’re not going to be able to solve the problems of the world,” said O’Connor of her students, “But they looked outside and wanted to make things a little better.”