WESERVE

The mission of Justin-Siena has long been to build students who “serve and lead in an ever changing world.” As educators in this challenging environment, it has never been more readily apparent just how needed this experience is for young people. To serve, however, should be more than a one-off event. Serving must be ingrained in our culture. To this end, Justin-Siena has embarked on service initiatives that reflect our Strategic Plan, which calls our school to “build significant and ongoing service opportunities through the community.”

As part of our faculty and staff retreat, each of our educators took part in a choose your own adventure day of service. Whether it was gardening with our senior living community neighbors, clearing out trails of invasive species, organizing donated goods for homeless shelters, our outreach team made sure that we used this time in the spirit of service. In our Advisory groups, over 30 “Welcome Home Kits” were gathered and assembled for families transitioning from homelessness to stable housing. Our highly successful fall sports teams have taken on various projects, most notably our Volleyball program partnered with Sacred Heart Cathedral to bring back the “Serve It Up Classic” for a day of service and competition.

To culminate our efforts this fall, we partnered with budding league rival Vintage High School for a “Unite for the Night” football game. With the goal of raising mental health awareness in our community, the Alaina’s Voice Foundation brought our two schools together, raising more than $2,000 by selling hundreds of t-shirts to honor Alaina Housley, a victim in the Thousand Oaks shooting. Fans from both sides dressed in camo in honor of Addie Dominici (daughter of Justin-Siena Director of Outreach, Megan ’92), who passed away in a tragic accident in 2019. Kashin Adams ’25 was inspired to see so many people step up to serve and particiapte that evening. He noted that, “everyone put the school rivalry aside for a night to come together as a community.”