Each year, students at St. Francis Xavier School’s participate in the Arrupe Project. This project challenges seventh- and eighth-grade students to find a local social issue to research and support through individual fundraising projects.
Helping Kids in Foster Care
Seventh-grade student, James Hartnett, chose to support Catholic Charities foster care program. His choice was especially meaningful because he was adopted from foster care through Catholic Charities when he was 3 months old.
Although he does not remember his time in foster care, he empathizes with the more than 19,000 Arizona children that are where he once was. With the money he raised, he bought toys for children in foster care, so that they could enjoy a family game night with their foster families.
Kids For Others
Even though the project was to help kids in foster care, Hartnett realized the intrinsic benefits of helping others, saying, “I feel satisfied inside that I did something good for kids. I don’t want kids that are in foster care to be stressed. They should just have the chance to be kids.”
For his project, Hartnett made dog toys to sell in St. Francis Xavier’s Arrupe Marketplace, a place where students’ hand-crafted goods were sold to raise money for their individual projects. James had spent the majority of his Christmas break making the dog toys, which he sold for $2 each, raising over $75 to buy toys for kids in foster care.
Catholic Charities provides training and support for foster parents, mentoring programs for kids in foster care, kinship foster care coaching, and 24-hour support.
For more information about foster care or to get involved, please email Sally Gramke at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
