A group of students and faculty members traveled to Visitation Academy a couple months ago to work with an organization called Gateway to Change. Gateway to Change is a charitable organization that focuses on helping “under-resourced non-profits” by giving away grants. They are working together to raise money for a group called Kingdom House Academy, which helps underprivileged kids graduate high school.

“I was put in touch with them through Principal Kevin Poelker,” Student Activities Director Michael Russo said, “and we thought it would be a cool idea to get our guys involved.”

Before they made their decision on Kingdom House Academy, they listened to other groups as well.

“We listened and read some grant proposals from the groups,” Russo said. “We worked with Visitation students and we talked about what makes a grant good, what makes it strong, and what to look for to see if an organization is spending their money responsibly.”

They are also raising money for another group called Bridge Builders, which was another group they were looking to work with.

“So we’re going to have a fundraising thing over Mission Week for Kingdom House and also Bridge Builders as well”, senior Matthew Dunn said. “We thought that they both had some good pros and cons.”

The goal is to raise about $10,000 dollars between De Smet and Visitation for the Gateway to Change grant.

“It’s kind of like a competition against Viz but not really though because they don’t anything of a Mission Week or something like that”, Dunn said. “We chose them and we’re going to try to raise money for them as well as deciding to give that grant to them to help fund some of their new programs for the elderly and helping with education as well.”