Shared on June 15 by Allison Rivera, President of St. Martin De Porres (New Haven, CT)

The Covid-19 Pandemic has presented its share of challenges. It also has offered us new opportunities. Thanks to funding from the Payroll Protection Program, we were able to hire six of our graduates, giving them something to do and some much-needed income, and giving SMPA the extra help needed to get our school cleaned, sanitized, and First-Day ready for our students' return in the fall - in addition to helping with a special Alumni project.

Saint Martin de Porres Academy’s student body is currently distance learning at home like most schools, but if you were able to visit our school, you would find six graduates there, hard at work. Five are busy cleaning up our building from what we thought would be a temporary leave in March and getting the school readied for the return of our students in the fall and another graduate is busy working on a special Alumni project.

Our graduates have been busy breaking down classrooms left mid-year, counting and organizing supplies, painting, cleaning, and reorganizing rooms to accommodate our anticipated COVID-compliant class layouts for the fall.

Another college graduate is working on a special Alumni Project, reaching out to all of our classes of alumni to update their contact information in our database and to launch our Alumni Society. Through this process, more than $25,000 has been pledged over the next 10 years to support their younger classmates through a Pay-It-Forward-Alumni-Campaign.