The Sports and Wellness Department runs an annual Elementary School floor hockey tournament on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. This event, like most sports events, showcases our diverse group of students coming together for one common goal: to have fun!  There was once a time where children from different neighborhoods and ethnicities could not do something as simple as that; where floor hockey was a focus of the day and giving back to the Brooklyn community truly stole the show.

At the event, each child took a moment to learn about what a food pantry was and the importance of eating healthy, no matter your circumstance. Everyone had a chance to design brown paper bags and fill them with healthy snacks that would later be donated to a food pantry in the same Brooklyn neighborhood. The bags included an apple, 100% juice box, granola bar and pretzels! But what made the bags special is the handwritten notes that each child wrote and put in the snack bags.

Here are a few samples:

250 bags were made. This means 250 people not only had healthy snacks, but also felt the love from one of our students. The bags were donated to Urban Strategies Inc, a Food Pantry in Brooklyn. They were so pleased to accept the donation. They shared that the messages made some of the Food Pantry clients emotional.

As you can see, compassion is something we are born with and it’s clear our children are filled with it. I aspire to be more like our SASF children – the future leaders of the world.

“ Without love, there is no reason to know anyone, for love will in the end connect us to our neighbors, our children and our hearts”

—Martin Luther King Jr.