By KENNY KEANE, Globe staff reporter
June 5, 2003

The Council on Sexual Assault and Domestic Violence (CSADV), located in Sioux City, provides support, advocacy and a safe environment to empower adults and children who have experienced domestic violence or sexual assault.

Through leadership and education, CSADV works collaboratively with the community to promote social change and to end violence.

That is their mission statement. In order to help them further their mission, the Life Core student group from Sioux City Heelan High School chose to donate $600 to the council on May 29.

"It is the first time that that group has donated money to us," said Robin Bollinger, development director for the CSADV. "So we're pretty happy to have started a collaborative relationship with them and have some mutual recognition of the work that we're both doing. We were thrilled to be a part of that.

"Anytime you have a group of students who come together and want to do something for the greater good, I think it's really wonderful. I just think that, in line with the Catholic schools' mission and Heelan's mission, our mission fits right in with that - of reaching people and helping people."

According to Katie Lehmann, Life Core president and 2003 Heelan graduate, the group's leadership team chose the CSADV from a list of several different organizations they reviewed when discerning where their donation should go.

"One of the members of our organization pointed out the fact that the council helps families - not just individuals," Lehmann said. "I think that was the most important feature since we at Heelan consider ourselves a family. That helped us make the final decision on it."

The Life Core group, composed of students from each grade level, prepares the school's weekly, Friday Masses. This year they also organized a prayer service for the troops of the U.S. armed forces. The money donated to the CSADV was raised through a penny drive that Life Core has organized at Heelan the last couple of years.

"What we did was, throughout Catholic Schools Week, during the lunch hour, we had five Culligan jugs - for each level of students and the faculty - set up in the CYO on the lunch counter," Lehmann said. "The students could drop by and donate money in each one of the jugs. The thing that made it kind of an incentive for the students was that the class that had the most positive points received a barbecue.

"The way that it worked was each penny donated counted as one positive point. Each silver coin counted for a negative point for how much that one was worth and the same with bills. So if you dropped in a $5 bill it was negative 500 points."

So Lehmann said the students would try to put in as many pennies as they could in their own jar and as many silver coins and dollars in the other jars. She said the seniors won this year with a really nice total.

Jill Ebel, who started out as a member of Life Core her freshman year and was on the leadership team as a sophomore this year, said the group has not done anything like this in the past. She thought it was a positive step for Life Core and would like to see the number of projects they take on continue to grow.

"I thought it was really good that we started something like that, and we got the school involved to help raise the money," Ebel said. "We might start something new next year, but we definitely hope to continue doing the penny drive. It was reallygood for the school, and we're definitely going to start doing more and get the school more involved."