LAPLACE — The fifth grade class at St. Joan of Arc Catholic School in LaPlace is helping children at a hospital in New Orleans.

“Every grade does a service project,” 10-year-old Sara Lang said. “Our service project is to help the children at Children’s Hospital.”

The students were recently awarded an $800 Brown Service Learning Grant from the Joe W. and Dorothy Dorsett Brown Foundation.

Fifth grade teacher Emma Vicknair said the students are using the funds to facilitate a walk-a-thon in the spring to raise money to buy supplies for activity carts at Children’s Hospital of New Orleans.

Vicknair said she chose to help Children’s Hospital because a friend of hers had a child who was once a patient there.

“They were in a car crash,” she said. “When I went there to visit, I learned about the activity carts. They were telling me that after Christmas, the carts get a little empty, because the hospital gets a lot of donations during the holidays, but then people don’t donate as much after. My thought was the fifth graders could fill the carts. We want to teach them they are fortunate to be able to come to school and be healthy enough to do things.”

A nurse is coming to speak to the students about what it’s like for children in the hospital and tell them what they normally do during the day and how the things in the cart make their day.

“We get to learn what the children do at the hospital and how they get through it,” said Ian Arnett, 10. “It’s probably really rough because they can’t spend time with their friends and can’t go outside.”

Vicknair also hopes to get a former student who spent a lot of time in the hospital to speak to her students.

“I want to know how it is when you are in the hospital because I’ve never been in the hospital over night before,” Arnett said.

Vicknair said the carts the students will be working to fill are actual carts hospital volunteers push around the hospital. The volunteers go into the patients’ rooms, and the children are allowed to select something like a book or puzzle.

“From what I understand, the kids get excited when the carts come,” Vicknair said. “It’s something for them to look forward to.”

Through the walk-a-thon, fifth graders hope to raise $500.

“In the walk-a-thon, someone like your grandmother would give you $1 for walking so many laps,” Lang said. “And if you walk two laps, she would give you $2.”

Vicknair chose the walk-a-thon to tie in healthy living with being thankful because children in the hospital may not be as fortunate. She also wanted students to learn service learning can be fun.

Lang said it amazes her on how lucky she and her classmates are while other children go through tough medical situations.

“I can’t imagine being sick and not being able to do anything,” she said. “If I could pick one item to put in the cart, I would like to put in an iPad so they would be able to talk to their family or friends out of state.”

Arnett said he would like to put a board game into the cart so the children could play with their friends when they come to visit.

“I want the kids in the children’s hospital to know that we care about them and don’t want them to have to stay in the hospital so long,” Arnett said.

Lang hopes the children put their trust in God that everything will turn out all right.

Principal Jeffrey Montz is proud of his students doing the walk-a-thon and helping the children in the hospital.

“I’m delighted,” Montz said. “It’s important that the students learn to reach out and look to the needs of others and not just themselves. I think the children at the hospital will be elated that children like them are giving them gifts.”

— By Raquel Derganz Baker