Sharing a meal together: it’s one of the core components of how we operate at St. Andrew’s. The long-standing tradition of gathering every weekday for family-style meals is essential to our school community. 

Saints know the power of dining together, and they’ve incorporated the campus tradition into their service work as a way to get to know and support the wider Delaware community. 

Through a partnership with Friendship House—a Wilmington organization that works to address housing insecurity in the state—students bring meals to one of Friendship House’s transitional homes to share with residents. These residences offer housing and individualized support to people recovering from substance abuse, domestic violence, or incarceration.

Olivia Costrini ’24, co-head of community service at St. Andrew’s, says that engaging in this service has completely changed her worldview. It expanded her understanding of homelessness—which Friendship House defines as a loss of community—as well as how transitional housing works to address this issue. 

“It’s a good, eye-opening experience for us because we go there and we realize different ways homelessness can look,” she says. 

The partnership between the transitional houses and St. Andrew’s has evolved, according to Brooke Estes ’24, who has volunteered for this program for the past few years. As the COVID-19 pandemic surged, St. Andrew’s students would make the meals, but not be able to eat with the residents. However, as restrictions eased, students took the meals, cooked by SAGE Dining Services, to the houses and sat down for food and conversation—which Costrini considers to be the most essential part of the program. 

“I think [the residents] all like it way more, and we like it, when we can sit there and talk to them,” says Costrini. 

“They’re really interested in what we’re interested in,” adds Estes, whose interests span a wide range of everything from leading the Multi-racial Affinity Group to working with the chapel as an acolyte. 

Costrini remembers her first time visiting Epiphany House, the women’s transitional home with which St. Andrew’s partners. “We talked about everything,” says Costrini, and just as she was walking out the door, she got a final piece of wisdom from one of the women. 

“‘Make sure that you really focus on what you want, and you don’t let anyone get in the way of it,’” Costrini remembers the resident saying. 

“I think about that all the time, because coming from her, it was just so touching,” she says. 

It’s often not easy to make volunteering at the transitional houses work, says Costrini, because the time that students are able to be there falls during sports practices and games. However, the challenge has created a dedicated group of student volunteers who aim to surmount it. They visit either the men’s or women’s home ideally once per week. “The people that want to go, really want to go,” says Costrini. 

“I can not tell you the amount of gratitude I have for continued support [and] the meals delivered by St. Andrew’s,” says Shawn Helmick, director of Women’s Housing at Friendship House. “They are always healthy, nutritious, and delicious meals … Also, when the [staff and faculty] and students can stay and join us for dinner, [that] is nice [and] always interesting.”

Often, the relationships formed between the students and the residents live solely in those powerful moments around their shared meal—there is no guarantee SAS students will see the same resident twice as residents rotate out of the homes.

However, Costrini says that the fact that they’ll often only see particular residents once is bittersweet, because a resident leaving the house often means that they’ve found an opportunity. “‘This is my way out,’” she remembers a resident saying when he found a job that would allow him to move out of the transitional house. 

“The next time we go back, I don’t think he’s gonna be there, and that’s really exciting,” says Costrini.  

The VI Formers consider community service opportunities such as this one to be an essential part of their St. Andrew’s experience, and they are determined to continue engaging in service in college. 

“Coming to St. Andrew’s, I heard about community service and that people do it because they want to do it,” says Estes. “Finally, [my] junior year, [in-person community service opportunities] opened up, and I just love helping others and making other people happy. It makes me happy, too.”