As members of St. Paul's Confirmation Program, students are asked to carry out a service project that reflects the values of the church and community.

Kaitlyn Hay and Stefanie Aquilina, both eighth-grade students at Jericho Middle School, took their project very seriously and saw their hard work come to life.

With the aid of staff from Beyond Borders, a Christian-based organization with staff in the United States and Haiti that seeks to improve the quality of life of Haitian people, Hay and Aquilina provided hundreds of disadvantaged children at literacy centers in Haiti with fun-filled activity books that they designed and had translated into Haitian Creole. In addition, the girls supplied crayons to each child thanks to the generous donations they received from St. Paul's Religious Education Center staff and students during the crayon drive held last year.

"We found out about this literacy center in Haiti that was not doing well, as a lot of parts of Haiti are," said Aquilina. "We needed to do a service project and thought this was a great idea. We got together a couple of times and we made an activity book that consisted of crossword puzzles, color in the picture and word searches. Kaitlyn and I made copies for all of the children and other people who go to the church with us were very nice and gave us some donations of crayons that we sent down along with the service project because most likely they would not have enough crayons."

Hay had done other projects in the last year with a Haitian orphanage "We thought it would be a nice idea to help them with activity books," said Hay. "The first thing that we did was sketch out activities for the book and then we made copies for the 300 kids in the literacy center."

In a letter to Hay and Aquilina, the Beyond Borders group expressed the thanks and joy of the children in these centers, many of whom have little opportunity for recreation.

"I want to do this again," said Aquilina. "It was a great experience and it worked out really well. We got a letter back and the reaction was great. We saw it in the pictures."

The girls shared their enthusiasm about this project and look forward to helping again. "It was very rewarding," said Hay. "The supervisor sent back pictures of the children receiving the activity books. To see how impoverished the children are from the desks - it made us feel good to help them. The children were very happy."

For more information about Beyond Borders, please visit www.beyondborders.net.