The Imagine Society

The Imagine Club are the teens behind the scenes of The Imagine Society. This group helps plan, produce, execute, and recruit new member groups for The Imagine Society events. After receiving professional leadership training they become the youth leaders of the small groups formed during the events. Imagine Club members are also engaged in service projects at their own schools and in their communities.

The Spirit Squad is officially three years old. The Spirit Squad has had many community service activities, like clothing and food collections, cooking and setting up the homeless shelter and the group has also originated the food pantry, which now serves over 80 families per week. The Spirit Squad has recently won a huge grant from “Feeding Our Neighbors”, and will be part of the Catholic Charities food hub distribution programs! The pantry is run only by kids in the Squad and in the Religious Education program, delivering 1,000 pounds of healthy food each month.

Some of their recent activities include, raising over $600 for “Guiding Eyes for the Blind” night walk, collecting leftover food from restaurants with Columbia students to deliver to the needy, assisting Health & Safety, sorting and distributing new clothing donated by a parishioner to the homeless, sponsoring two families over Christmas who were separated from their parents due to fighting deportation – gifting them a decorated tree and their most wished for gifts, and collecting coins and medical supplies for Ascension’s medical mission to the Dominican Republic.

When the Spirit Squad goes out to have fun (activities include going bowling in Times Square) they distribute business cards to homeless individuals on the streets, directing them to the homeless drop in center, CAMBA. The Spirit Squad also provides the homeless with round trip Metro cards, which the Pastor collects from parishioners at Ascension as part of their Lenten outreach. About 20 homeless men and women who have used the cards, became part of the CAMBA group, and are now off the streets and transitioning into homes. The Spirit Squad is saving lives!!!

A youth-led service group in downtown Manhattan, The Warriors have launched and executed many incredibly successful service projects such as The Gift and Diaper Drive for Sienna House and The Easter Basket Drive which raised over $2,800 for Easter Baskets to give to Siena House, a shelter in the Bronx for homeless women and their babies. Each Easter basket was hand delivered by the Warriors and contained hand picked items donated through a Target registry. The Warriors  have also launched online and community engagement coat drives to benefit the Bowery Mission where they recently served dinner and are currently operating a city-wide “It’s Just a Box” sock and underwear drive to benefit shelters all over New York.

St. Malachy’s, the Actors’ Chapel Youth Group Has been involved in many community outreach projects included making Valentine’s Day cards for the senior citizen residents of the Encore Community Center, making Mother’s Day gift baskets for the incarcerated mothers at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for women and making and donating sandwiches for the hungry through The Common Pantry.

Muslim Volunteers for New York (MV4NY) is a community-based 501(C)3 involved in charitable and volunteer based initiatives. It focuses on engaging the community in a variety of grass root efforts to give back to the Greater New York area. It operates in four areas: Education & Literacy, Health & Wellness, Environmental Protection and Hunger & Poverty Alleviation. It has many projects offering and volunteer opportunities for kids, teens and adults. They work closely with other service organizations and in conjunction with these organizations have done food drives to help the food insecure and pajama & book drives, serve meals to the home bound elderly, sort books for the underserved students and libraries at schools, and protect green spaces in our community, to name a few. MV4NY executed a successful Valentine’s Day project for City Meals on Wheels and shared an opportunity for kids 8th grade and up on March 9th to sort books for project Cicero. Our three youth guests at our last event are launching plans for a youth led branch of MV4NY in the near future!

Spark and Ignite are two youth groups that operate at St. Ignatius Loyola on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Ignite teens are engaged in a day of service on Saturdays, once a month. We are thrilled to have Spark and Ignite as new members of the Imagine Society. We welcomed two of their fantastic representatives at our last event.