Part of Parkview’s Mission Statement is “Equipping Students, Serving our Community, Touching the World…with excellence and love!” In an effort to “serve our community” and “touch the world,” we have several planned outreaches throughout the year.
 Feed My Starving Children is a not-for-profit organization located in Aurora, IL whose vision is to “strive to eliminate starvation in children throughout the world by helping to instill compassion in people to hear and respond to the cries of those in need.” Our students go each year to help package food items to be shipped to children around the world along with the Gospel message to feed the hunger of their bodies and spirit.
The Kendall County Health Department is located in Yorkville and allows our middle school students to come every year to help with weeding and planting around their facility. The Mission of the Kendall County Health Department is to “provide population based programs and services to promote physical, mental, and environmental health, protect the community's health, prevent disease and promote family self-sufficiency.” While Parkview does not help directly accomplish this mission, our students’ service around the physical building helps facilitate the Health Department staff to accomplish their goal.
This year our Middle School and High School students moved out of our Main Campus into Helmar Lutheran Church, which we now call our South Campus. One of the ministries of Helmar is a Food Pantry that is held in their gym twice-a-month. Our students are now volunteering to help set up for the event, as well as unload food items from trucks as they are delivered to the church.
Since 2008, Parkview has hosted a “Taste of…the World!” missions emphasis. Every class chooses a country of the world to research, then present the night of the event. Students from Preschool through High School all participate and may dress in the attire of the country, find artifacts or create projects to tell what they have learned, and provide food samples that would represent their selected country.
Perhaps the most important event that takes place during the “Taste of…” event, however, is the foreign missions project for which the students raise money. Before the start of the school year, Parkview chooses a project that the school will raise money for. Projects have included shoeboxes for Samaritan’s Purse, a “dirty water” campaign to dig a well in Tanzania, a Christian school in Bolivia, and an orphanage for kids with special needs in Guatemala. The students then raise money to help meet the need of that given project. The actual “Taste of…” event will then feature someone speaking to the families about the selected project.
Through these community and world outreach projects, we hope to instill in our students a mindset outside themselves. The God we serve has a heart for the nations and we desire our students to feel His burden to reach those in need both in our community and around the world. |
