Last summer, along with four other friends, Westminster Christian School senior Alyssa Andreus started an organization called Teach Hope, Spread Love.
The five students are from five different schools – Andreus attends Westminster, Pablo Puga is from Belen, Maryrose George attends LaSalle, Sabrina Perez Abreau goes to Lourdes, and Sophia Torres goes to St. Brendan’s.
“We get together once or twice a month, and we open it up to all our schools,” she says.
“We get 20-30 volunteers.”
The students put together sandwiches and kits that include toiletries, clothes, blankets, and other necessities.
“We have teamed up with other groups that do similar things and have coordinated to do things at the same time,” she says.
One of the groups they plan to work with in Broward is Net for Life.
The five friends have all participated on mission trips in the past. Those mission trips helped them realize that there are a lot of people locally who need help and they don’t have to go to another country to give back.
“We can help our community get better by feeding the homeless,” she says. “We go to different locations around downtown Miami. We meet at Lummus Park to put together bags.”
From there, they go to two or three locations every other week.
When they started, they put together a Go Fund Me page that received a lot of donations.
They use those funds to pay for the supplies. The volunteers will also bring supplies.
Participating student volunteers receive five service hours for each event and an extra two hours if they donate supplies. Plans call for the project to continue through the school year and into the summer, until they leave for college.
Andreus has received three acceptances so far. They include Marymount, The University of Tampa and Florida International University. She’s waiting for word from Villanova and Florida State University.
“I want to go into nursing,” she says, adding she wants to become a nurse anesthesiologist.
At Westminster, Andreus is the co-founder of the literary magazine, Roots. The first two years they put out two small issues each year. This year, they decided to switch to one larger issue that will come out at the end of the year.
“We publish poetry, shorts stories, and creative writing,” she says. “We do feature art work and photography. Last year we opened it up so that if teachers wanted to submit something, they could.”
For relaxation she writes short stories and occasional poems, but doesn’t put them into the magazine.
During the summer, Andreus volunteers at the bible camp at the Church of the Little Flower in Coral Gables.
She participated on two Westminster sponsored mission trip to the Dominican Republic and volunteered at an orphanage.
“It warms your heart when you see that some have found a home with someone who loves them and will care for them,” she says. “We are down there for a week. We go we do Vacation Bible School with the kids in Spanish. Sometimes they have us be with the older kids and speak to them in English. Sometimes they have us with the babies.”
One year the students painted a swing set for the orphanage and another year they cleaned out closets and organized them.
When they go, they take snacks for the children, underwear, notebooks and crayons.
“Things they need that we can go to CVS and get,” she says. “They are so grateful to get them. It makes you realize how fortunate you are to have what you have.”
Linda Rodriguez Bernfeld
