Walmart’s Community Grants Program recently awarded $1,500 to our Growing Gardeners Club to help our students continue to learn how to maintain, harvest and expand our full raised vegetable and flower garden.
Dave Van Loan, general manager at Walmart on Silver Spring Street, selected our school to receive this charitable donation.
“We at Walmart are so glad to give back to our community and glad we now have a great partnership with St. Pius V School. We will continue to support this school in future needs to continue to give back to the city,” Van Loan said.
Our Growing Gardeners Club brings together four communities in the Elmhurst neighborhood of Providence: Providence College, St. Pius V School, St. Pius V Church and Chefs Feeding Kids. The club invites Providence College FriarServe volunteers, school parents and staff, and local neighbors to volunteer to mentor St. Pius V students and to provide a venue for them to learn about gardening. Students, in turn, donate all harvested produce to Chefs Feeding Kids, a local non-profit organization that helps to eliminate hunger and promote healthy eating initiatives for food-insecure youth in the neighborhood.
With the $1,500, our school will purchase a greenhouse for the garden club in order to extend our growing and harvest season. This will allow us to donate more produce to Chefs Feeding Kids!
“This generous grant is an investment in the formation of our students and will help them learn skills that will enable them to be good custodians of our environment and empathetic contributors to their community,” said Maureen Wilkins, St. Pius V School receptionist and leader of the Growing Gardeners Club.
We are so grateful for Walmart’s generous donation, which will help sustain and expand this very impactful program!
