There’s something to be said for the three tenets of Saint Albert the Great Church’s Parish Service Day – compassion, service, community – and the fact that these pillars have held strong during one of the region’s shakiest times.
Four days before the annual charity event took place, the Wallings Road church was just shy of reaching 1,900 volunteers signing up for various service projects to be performed over a two-day period – their typical net is around 2,000, said Denise Bobulsky, services and volunteer coordinator for Saint Albert the Great Church.
Though this year’s charitable event morphed with new guidelines and restrictions, the church community’s attitude towards helping others has stayed the course. This year’s Parish Service Day, held Oct. 9 and 10, featured several at-home and outside projects. At-home projects included “Blessings Bag” service projects that called for volunteers to put together care packages at home and drop them off assembled to the church for distribution. Projects ranged in scope and included gathering toiletry items for the West Side Catholic Center and crafting Bingo snack bags for residents in assisted living facilities, among several others. Participants also had outside project options including local cemetery and pack clean-ups, prayer groups, car parades and chalk drawings on nursing home sidewalks. Parochial school families at Saint Albert the Great at Assumption Academy and Saint Albert the Great School, excused from school on Oct. 9, were encouraged to perform their own acts of service at home, from picking up litter in their neighborhoods to donating needed care items to local animal shelters to raking leaves for an elderly neighbor to saying a family Rosary for the sick.
Saint Albert the Great School mom and parishioner Jennifer Mentessi headed up the collection of hygiene bags for the West Side Catholic Center and said 41 families signed up for the donation project. Her son, Griffin, a seventh grader, was on-hand Oct. 9 to help with collecting the donations.
“We chose this service project because my older son is a student at St. Ignatius and the West Side Catholic Center is very near there and I wanted to get more involved in acts of goodwill for that community,” Mentessi said.
Many families picked service projects that held some sort of personal connection or significance.
Hinckley mom Shannon Lembach chose to assemble snack item bags for Cleveland’s Metro Catholic.
“This project was age-appropriate for my preschooler and Kindergartener and something we could complete together as a family and that they would understand the importance of,” Lembach said.
Many participants commented on how extraordinary it was that Parish Service Day still occurred and with just as much dedication and passion as in years’ past. Parish Service Day typically ushers in hundreds of volunteers onto the church campus and at dozens of sites around northeast Ohio.
“It’s always just a tremendous effort anyway, and to be able to set it up this year so we’re still able to serve the community and do what we can to help, is just wonderful,” Lembach said.

By SARA MACHO HILL
Contributing Writer