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Our Lady students and participants in the Sunday night Faith Formation Classes raised more than $5000 through Heifer International's Read to Feed Community Service Learning project.

"The student and staff of Our Lady School, as well as the students and staff of the Faith Formation Classes are proud to be part of a generation of compassionate and responsible global citizens who want to be involved in changing the world ," said Donna Belzer, the school's librarian and technology coordinator.

Read to Feed is a reading incentive program that pairs a love of reading with global education. The program inspires children to read more books for pleasure while raising money to help end world hunger and improve the environment.

Our Lady students set individual goals and then signed up sponsors for the books they read. The goal was to raise money to buy gifts of livestock for struggling families who need an ongoing source of income. The $5,000 raised will allow the students to purchase an ark of animals which will be sent to a needy community to help to end hunger and poverty.

School students in preschool through the fourth grade read 1,447 books during the month long project. Fifth through eight grade students read more than 33,000 pages. Top school readers were Kelly Gross, Christian Kolles, Jordyn Briggs, Brooke Briggs, Madison Ryan, Sloan McDonagh, Monique Hemker, Dylan McKnight and Thomas Stasa.

Heifer International was founded in 1944 and is a humanitarian assistance organization that works to end world hunger and protect the earth. Heifer has helped seven million families in more than 125 by providing a "living loan" of an animal and extensive training in animal care, community development and earth-friendly farming practices. The family's health and standard of living improves by the many benefits their animal can provide - milk, eggs, wool, fertilizer, draft power and so on.

Families who receive an animal repay the loan by passing on one or more of their animal's offspring to other families in need. These families in turn pass on the gift to another family.

For more information on Heifer International visit www.heifer.org.