Xaverian students learn to live on $3 a day

Boys take part in Urban Challenge in Camden, New Jersey

November 17, 2014 By Paula Katinas Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Xaverian High School students learned first-hand what it’s like to have to live on $3 a day. Photo courtesy of Xaverian High School

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What’s it like to live on a measly $3 a day? Students from Xaverian High School in Bay Ridge had the unique opportunity to find out when they took part in an urban retreat.

Nine Xaverian juniors and seniors traveled to Camden, New Jersey to participate in the Romero Center’s Urban Challenge, a immersion retreat program, from Oct. 23-26.

Students William Kay, Sam Neibel, Antonio Franciosa, Albert Connelly, Marvel Delva, Jose Rosales, Dylan DiTucci-Cappiello, Paul Jeanbart and Malachi Provenzano, along with Campus Minister John Dormer and faculty member Brendan Gorman, stayed for three nights at the Romero Center and participated in various service projects, including working in a soup kitchen, organizing supplies in a food bank distribution center, planting trees and visiting disabled people in a group home.

The group also spent a day living on $3 per person to learn how the poorest residents in New Jersey feed themselves and their families.

The urban retreat program is sponsored by Romero Center Ministries, a Catholic organization founded in 1998 in memory of the late Archbishop Oscar Romero, a religious leader who was assassinated in a church in El Salvador while serving mass in 1980. He had called on the country’s soldiers to halt repressive tactics against the population and to honor basic human rights.

The students said the retreat experience had a profound effect on them.

Senior Antonio Franciosa said he learned a lot during the retreat. “Being able to attend the retreat to Camden was an experience unlike any other. It allowed me to see the hardship present in people’s lives. Sure, poverty can be seen on television, but experiencing it firsthand is truly an eye-opening experience. Never does one realize the full extent of hunger, violence and general poverty until it is witnessed by one’s own eyes. Helping these people in need was amazing and left a lasting mark on all of us. As a whole, the retreat made me realize all the things that I take for granted on a regular basis that these people could hardly even dream of having,” he said.

Another senior, Albert Connelly, said he was profoundly moved by the retreat. “I had the unique opportunity to catch a glimpse of what life is like for the thousands of people in the city, and it reminded me of the things that we can sometimes take for granted,” he said.

“One of the things that I took away from the trip was that we need to be active. The only way that the situation in Camden can be improved is for those of us who are privileged enough to have a voice to use it, whether it be through politics, service, or simply telling others,” Connelly added.