As we prepare to honor those who serve throughout the year in different capacities with Hairgrove Elementary, we thought we’d highlight a special Calvary member who has faithfully served at another school in our area. Hairgrove is not the only place where you’ll find our church members giving of their time and efforts on behalf of teachers, students, and school staff. We have many Calvary members who serve throughout our neighborhood school districts and who are making a difference in their local communities. Marcella Rundio is one of them.
The name is familiar to most of you, but what you may not know about Marcella is that she received a very special award at the end of this previous school year – Volunteer of the Year for Mayde Creek High School. That’s a huge honor, especially when you consider that Marcella works full-time here at the church as Financial Secretary, serves as a volunteer with our Calvary Girl’s Club, has a daughter going away to college in a few weeks, and has a son about to start his senior year in high school. Yet, she still makes time to serve at her son’s school.
Marcella has been volunteering at Mayde Creek High School in Katy ISD for six years. In that time she has served with the Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA), helped with Drill Team, and now currently serves as the President of the Navy Jr. ROTC Booster Club. Her current role as president involves working with a team of six other parent volunteers who support the 125 cadets by coordinating fundraising and feeding the cadets at training events. Their team also helps provide fun things for the teachers as part of Teacher Appreciation efforts as one of the schools extra-curricular organizations.
When I asked Marcella why it is so important to her to volunteer in the school, she said that she believes that “…parents make a difference. Most extra-curricular organizations receive little to no funding. So booster clubs make a difference. It is important to spend time with kids in this way because it shows them that you value them.”
Marcella mentioned that by being a volunteer, she has had many opportunities to meet new people, and time to get to know the faculty and administrators in her kid’s schools. In addition to her other volunteer roles, Marcella also serves on the Advisory Board at Mayde Creek. She is one of only two parents invited to be a part of a team which meets with the school Principal three times a year. Through this board, she is learning how the system works within the school district. Although this position is a two year term, the board valued Marcella’s input and dedication so much that they requested a change to the bylaws to increase the term to three years!
So why would someone do this – give so much time and effort, in addition to holding down a full-time job and being an active volunteer in other areas of their life? For Marcella, the answer is simple.
People come from all walks of life. Not everyone you meet while serving in the community is going to be someone you would see on a Sunday morning sitting next to you during the worship service. Being a volunteer has opened up opportunities for her to minister to others, pray with them, and share her faith while serving alongside them. Marcella believes that the investment of time and energy has been well worth it, not to mention the personal satisfaction received from making a difference in her children’s lives and in the lives of many other kids she’s met, served, and loved on by being a volunteer outside the home and outside of our church.
Let’s apply this principle to why we do what we do at Hairgrove Elementary. As a church body, this is the school that we, along with Copperfield Church, have chosen to partner with to help make a difference in the lives of children in our community. Maybe there is a school near you, one you pass by regularly and give no thought as to how much they might need someone like you to come in and read to a class, help stock library books, stuff backpacks with food for a hungry child, serve as a mentor, or perhaps start an after-school club doing something you love. These are just a few of the activities our Hairgrove Partnership team and volunteers from the churches have engaged in at Hairgrove throughout the years.
We are honored to have these amazing people among us, such as Marcella and all the many volunteers from Copperfield Church and Calvary who are making an impact in the lives of children, school faculties, and parents at Hairgrove Elementary and many other schools throughout our community. When we volunteer, we are making a statement about the kind of world in which we would like to live. Thank you, volunteers!
To learn more about how you can join us in our efforts at Hairgrove, click here to register for the Hairgrove Volunteer Appreciation Dinner, which is Tuesday, August 5. The deadline to register is Monday, July 28. At this dinner event, you will learn ways that you can volunteer and you will receive information on how you can advocate for local school partnerships in general and the Hairgrove partnership in particular.
Cheryl Moses, 7/26/2014
