Each year the school holds two picnics, one at the beginning of the year and one at the closing. Alumni and families are invited to attend. Organized by the school’s parent organization, each picnic tries to have a theme or offer something special. With the Ice Bucket Challenge being so popular over the summer, the school decided to participate with slight modifications.
“This caused a little more excitement,” said Principal Trenna Meins.
Leading up to the school’s annual Back to School Picnic, students were asked to sell raffle tickets. With each ticket they sold, they were able to enter a pool to win a chance to dump the bucket of ice-cold water on a teacher of their choice. By the day of the picnic the students had raised $205.
Proceeds from the fundraiser were donated to the John Paul II Medical Research Institute. As part of the fundraiser, Sacred Heart challenged St. Catherine of Alexandria School, Riverside; St. James School, Perris and Resurrection Academy, Fontana to also do the chilly event.
The ALS ice bucket challenge initially called for people to challenge friends to douse themselves with ice-cold water, make a donation to the ALS Association or both, for the purpose of fighting amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or, Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
But because the ALS Association has acknowledged conducting research using embryonic stem cells, a practice opposed by the Catholic Church, Catholics have instead made donations to the John Paul II Medical Research Institute, a secular non-profit research institute “grounded in a pro-life bioethic that respects the dignity of every human life,” according to their website. They conduct research to advance technology to treat diseases such as ALS, cancer, Alzheimer’s and other more rare diseases.