THE STAND STRONG CAMPAIGN FOR SAFETY
If you have visited St. Michael over the last 2 years, you've noticed the transformation of our front entry. In Spring, 2018, we launched a "Stand Strong" initiative for school safety. Stand Strong began as a movement within our community to better secure the school; safety being top priority. The major outcome of the campaign was an overhaul of our front entry, as shown in the photos below. In addition to many physical safety upgrades, we have a new, secure traffic pattern into the school, upgraded nursing and office space, and fantastic technological improvements This is incredibly exciting and we are deeply grateful to the community's response to this critical building project.
This update was made possible by over 500 donations, including a "major match" of $50,000 to kick off the campaign. As well, we saw incredible generosity from a small group of major donors who made this initiative their financial priority. We had parents, alumni, grandparents, parishioners, card-playing groups, associations, businesses, and more come forward with contributions. We have been truly blessed by our generous community. A heartfelt "thank you," to all who contributed!
THE STAND STRONG GRATITUDE WALL..."WINGS OF ANGELS"
In Spring 2020, we installed a beautiful tribute to the Stand Strong campaign in our main entry. Due to COVID-19, we have postponed a formal dedication of the space and donor wall, however we are excited to share it with you! Throughout the campaign, donors were referred to as our Stand Strong Angels, as paper angels with donors' names were placed throughout our entry, "watching over" our students while the physical transformation took place. We transitioned our paper angels to a permanent, interactive gratitude wall, which bears the names of all donors at the $1,000-$50,000 levels. Above the artwork sits the words "Alis Angeli Dei," meaning simply "wings of angels."
It brings us great joy to share our gratitude toward the named and unnamed angels among us on our "wings of the angels" who supported this critical campaign for safety.
We hope all who walk by are inspired when seeing these "wings of angels" as they enter and exit our school.
We hope all who stand in front of these wings see the "angel
within" as the
"wings of angels" sprawl behind them!
