Community Service and Environmental Awareness
Projects
Mission: To provide San Antonio Academy students and teachers with opportunities to serve others in their local community and abroad.
Community
Living Legacy Program:
 The Living Legacy Program at Chandler Nursing Home in Monte Vista was established in 1988 after realizing the importance of intergenerational relationships. The program teams sixth, seventh and eighth grade students with a senior buddy so that the two can get to know each other through a series of one-on-one interviews. After several visits with their resident, the students write poems, which they recite aloud during a presentation party. Today, the program continues to touch the lives of Academy boys and their senior friends.
Food Drive:
Each November Academy students pitch in to help collect food items for the San Antonio Food Bank. To date, SAA has collected over 20,000 food items for the organization.
Annual Community Outreach:
- The PreK boys collect toys for needy children to be distributed through the Sonny Melendrez Foundation.
- Kindergarten students collect requested items for soldiers being deployed to Iraq. The project is sponsored by San Antonio USO.
- First graders gather unwrapped toys that are delivered to Elf Louise for needy children.
- Second grade students purchase toys for the Any Baby Can Alliance of San Antonio, supporting medically fragile children. The boys perform special chores at home, ask their extended family for contributions, and have the option of participating in an optional Read-A-Thon. They then use the money to purchase toys at Target.
- Third graders share their love of reading by collecting new and gently-used books for children staying at the SAMM Shelter.
- Fourth graders gather gifts for CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Children’s Hospital.
- Fifth graders bring canned goods and non–perishable food items to school for the San Antonio Food Bank.
- Sixth grade boys collect money to buy non-fiction books for the children of Niños de la Calle in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico.
- Seventh graders collect money to help twenty-five families in Nuevo Progreso, Mexico and the twelve elementary schools there. Los Niños de la Calle project was initiated by Cathy Cummins six years ago. Donations by SAA have been used to build an enrichment room with games, books, and computers; they have sponsored art fairs, clothing purchases and cash envelopes for the families. Most important, the donations have encouraged students to stay in school.
- SAA’s Círculo Hispánico Chapter of the Spanish National Honor Society spearheads a schoolwide drive to raise money to help orphaned Peruvian children.
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Environmental
Campus-wide Recycle Program:
 In an effort to pitch in and do our part to help the environment, SAA is making a campus-wide push to recycle the paper produced in classrooms, workrooms, and administrative offices. Below, is a sample of the results over a four-month time span, collecting approximately 3,500 pounds of paper waste! This saves:
29 trees
7,000 KWH of energy
12, 250 gallons of water
5.5 cubic yards of landfill
105 pounds of air pollution
Eco-Cell: Used Cell Phone Collection Drive
Last April, SAA conducted a used cell phone collection campaign to help defray the cost of our paper recycling program while helping our environment. According to reports, over 75% of the estimated 500 million+ phones no longer being used are in drawers in people's homes or offices. Unfortunately, less than 10% of these phones are recycled properly.
Over the course of three weeks, SAA had exceeded its goal to collect 100 used cell phones by Earth Day, April 22, 2009. The cell phones traveled to a local company which pays organizations for collecting used cell phones, batteries, and accessories and runs a strict no landfill program. Spearheaded by SAA's third and fourth grade Science teacher, Cathy Baumgardner, the campaign's success has spurred another drive slated for sometime next school year.
Butterfly Garden:
 In spring 2003, Academy students collaborated to build a butterfly garden on The Academy campus. A Human-i-tees T-shirt sale organized by the fourth graders produced the funds to underwrite the project and the seventh graders helped construct and plant the native flowers that attract butterflies. The garden reminds us to do our part in caring for the Earth as well as providing opportunities for every student to learn about ecology and horticulture through a hands-on approach. Today, the tradition continues as primary students plant flowers in the garden every spring to watch the butterflies return 'home.'
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