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Senior Earns First Ecological Humanitarian Award

Senior Earns First Ecological Humanitarian Award
Posted on 07/14/2021
Lauren Antonacci

Rising senior Lauren Antonacci is the inspiration and first recipient of Immaculata Campus Ministry’s new Ecological Humanitarian Award. Since freshman year Lauren has faithfully contributed her weekly gallon size bags of compost, over and over again for the past three years. As a freshman there were 61 gallons; sophomore year up until March (due to the pandemic’s switch to virtual) there were 49 gallons contributed. This year Lauren contributed her personal best of 63 gallons! One hundred and seventy-three times, as a high school volunteer, Lauren brought her compost for our Spartan Soil Connection’s fundraising efforts and those efforts spoke quite loudly. After a Sunday Mass at Immaculate Conception Church, Lauren sold, within minutes, 83 gallons of compost, generating a total of $222 when combined with pre-sale orders.

All of the proceeds from compost, annually, go to our Appalachia program, which every six months brings student volunteers to learn about and help alleviate the burdens of rural poverty in West Virginia.

“Today I was thinking about tossing my morning banana peel and orange rind out in the trash because I had no other contributions since Friday was the last day for students, so why walk all the way out to our garden just for that,” said Mr. Grieshaber who started the compost program in 2016, “but then I thought how hard Lauren works for this program so that inspired me to make the trek out into the wet mud this morning, even though it was just my two simple small contributions.” Volunteers like Miss Antonacci inspire others and that’s why we are so proud to announce this distinction for Lauren.

Immaculata’s Spartan Soil Connection has raised $962 through the sale of 318 gallons of compost in four years of sales. We look forward to all the “green-thumb” stories that will come back this fall from using the natural product that develops year after year from the efforts of countless volunteer students who serve Coffee ‘N Chat, K-Cups ‘N Flix, ECOrenoisseur, Pumpkin Smash, Lata Limbs, Wood Chipping, Compost Raking, and our other events that collectively contribute to our annual year-end compost sale. Have a wonderfully green summer everyone!