Earlier this summer, the Christ Child Society of Milwaukee’s Gavel Club delivered 617 reusable BPA-free water bottles to three different parochial schools: Blessed Savior South, Northwest Catholic and St. Catherine’s.
The project was headed by Betsy Haushalter, the immediate past president of the CCS and the chair of the Gavel Club, which is made up of all the past presidents. The mission of the club is to perform a service project to aid the local children.
In the past, the service projects were hands-on. Haushalter explained her service project, saying, “I did not want to put either students or anyone at risk, so I started calling around the schools and they basically, three of the schools on my list, they all said that they wanted, really needed, water bottles for their students.”
Haushalter explained that while Blessed Savior South, Northwest Catholic and St. Catherine’s were the first three that responded to her, they were schools the CCS already had relationships with. She said, “I thought of them immediately as having a student body that would probably need help as far as getting water bottles for their students.”
The $705 used for the project was made of donations from the members of the Gavel Club and, with the money, 500 water bottles were purchased for first through eighth graders, and 117 bottles with a twist off snack compartment were bought for kindergarteners at the three schools.
The Gavel Club also ensured that the teachers would be given permanent markers to write the names of the children on the bottles.
As of recently, there are no plans to carry on the project. Haushalter said another organization she is part of, the Women’s Club of Wisconsin, is thinking about continuing the project for schools of all religions in the Milwaukee area.
