Keeping
Faith
Abby Jelavich’s
grandmother wanted to come to sports events at her granddaughter’s school
but was kept away by lack of handicapped-accessible parking. So Jelavich, 13,
set about to remedy the situation.
Through the school’s Public Achievement program, Jelavich
brought a proposal for handicapped parking to the parish council of St. Gregory
Babarigo Parish in Maryville, Mo., where she is a parishioner and an
eighth-grade student at the parish school. The project was approved, and funds
were donated by the Parent-Teacher Organization.
“You don’t need an earth-changing idea,” Jelavich
said. “Just look around and see what you can do.”
Don Sly had a reliable 1977
Toyota pickup he wanted to donate to a community development organization in El
Salvador, and he took it there himself on a 5,000-mile drive from Seattle to
San Salvador.
“I just drove it because there was no other way to get it
there,” he said. “There was not enough money to ship it. I
didn’t realize how far away it was when I volunteered to drive
it!”
Sly, 54, loaded up the truck with medical and school supplies,
computers, bicycles, clothes and toys that had been donated to the Institute
for Technology, Environment and Self-Sufficiency. He left Aug. 1, 1998, and
arrived Aug. 9. He stayed a week in El Salvador, to see the work of the
institute, which was founded by his friend Jose Alas, a former priest from El
Salvador.
Peter Reynolds’ media
company, FableVision, has a mission to tell “stories that matter.”
With a mix of storytelling, art and animation, Reynolds, 37, has brought this
mission to schools, scouting groups and religious education classes.
One of those stories, “The North Star,” is
“designed to help kids and grown-up kids be more reflective and thoughtful
about their journey, to take the time to pause and look up and be
inspired,” said Reynolds, who is a parishioner at St. Susanna Church in
Dedham, Mass.
Most of the educational presentations Reynolds makes are
“done purely as a mission,” he said. They are funded by work for
public television and educational publications. “Even the things we do for
money are things that matter to us,” he said.
Send suggestions for Keeping Faith to Teresa Malcolm at NCR.
Her E-mail address is tmalcolm@natcath.org
National Catholic Reporter, March 5,
1999
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