Touchdown!

Led by a strong fifth grade, St. Philip Neri School in Bedford Park ran through their competition and shocked the Bronx with a surprise soup drive victory this February.

The SOUPer Bowl is a soup drive hosted by Our Lady of Refuge School and soup kitchen in Fordham and co-hosted by three other Catholic schools in the Bronx, namely Our Lady of Mt. Carmel (also in Fordham), St. Brendan’s in Norwood, and the surprise winner, St. Philip Neri. St. Philip collected almost 2300 cans in their first year of participation, citing community togetherness, peer to peer mentorship, and a mean inter-grade competitive spirit as their keys to success.

“The children were recognizing, ‘wow, we are really helping others to replenish and help feed our neighbors.’ One of our mottos is ‘servium’, which means to serve,” St. Philip Neri Principal Ajeia Beebe said.

St. Philip Neri students were taught that service can be fun as well. Beebe and her faculty decided to make the drive into a competition among the various grades, which quickly became a no holds barred free-for-all for the top spot.

“I had students bring in 100 cans… They wanted to win so bad,” said Rachelle Leger, a teacher of the triumphant fifth grade. “We had a tactic, we had a game plan to winning. We had a total of 734 cans. We felt really great about it.” The fifth graders earned the coveted prize of a pizza party and a custom trophy for their efforts.

Teachers at St. Philip Neri also preach peer mentorship so that the younger students can learn the values of service from their older schoolmates. Auriel Kagarcia, an eighth grader, said that, “I realized that there are a lot of people that are less fortunate than us, and we need to help those people. Especially for the little ones, they need to understand those things.”

St. Philip Neri’s collection, which ranged beyond just cans to ramen and soup, was donated to the Convent of Guadalupe for the Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal. As for the future of the SOUPer Bowl, Beebe says there is hope that the drive will expand to other local Bronx schools, including some high schools, in the coming years. But for Leger, it’s personal.

“As a fifth grade teacher, I do want to keep [the competition] going because I want to continue our reign. We don’t want [the trophy] to leave the fifth grade, in the name of Jesus no we don’t,” she said.

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Welcome to the Norwood News, a bi-weekly community newspaper that primarily serves the northwest Bronx communities of Norwood, Bedford Park, Fordham and University Heights. Through our Breaking Bronx blog, we focus on news and information for those neighborhoods, but aim to cover as much Bronx-related news as possible. Founded in 1988 by Mosholu Preservation Corporation, a not-for-profit affiliate of Montefiore Medical Center, the Norwood News began as a monthly and grew to a bi-weekly in 1994. In September 2003 the paper expanded to cover University Heights and now covers all the neighborhoods of Community District 7. The Norwood News exists to foster communication among citizens and organizations and to be a tool for neighborhood development efforts. The Norwood News runs the Bronx Youth Journalism Heard, a journalism training program for Bronx high school students. As you navigate this website, please let us know if you discover any glitches or if you have any suggestions. We’d love to hear from you. You can send e-mails to norwoodnews@norwoodnews.org or call us anytime (718) 324-4998.