For Valentine’s Day, students at GAC wanted to reach beyond the walls of the school and show their love to the homeless in Atlanta. Partnering with Homeless at Heart, GAC students prepared nearly 200 handmade Valentine’s Day boxes, filled with personal care items, snacks, small gifts, and handwritten notes of love and encouragement, to be distributed to the homeless community in Atlanta this week. Twenty of the boxes are going to young people who were recused from human trafficking during the Super Bowl in Atlanta last week.

Homeless at Heart was created as a result of an 11-year-old Atlanta student's aspiration in January of 2015 to make 10 Valentine boxes with handwritten cards for the homeless. Three years later, the organization leads children in making and distributing tens of thousands of boxes. GAC students share the same passion that drives this organization. Says GAC junior Jessica Israel: “Leading the Homeless at Heart service project with my chapel group was important to me because it is our opportunity to spread love throughout the Atlanta area. Showing Christ’s love through our service is one of the most important ways to lead others into a relationship with God.”

Students in the School of Ballet also participated, but their boxes had a little something “extra.” 

They decorated shoeboxes with red hearts, wrapping paper, hand-drawn pictures, and paper lace. The students hoped their boxes would send powerful messages of hope and love to the homeless in Atlanta for Valentine’s Day.