Blessing Of The Animals At Christ Church

Helen Boxwill, President and Director and h_ Empower Inc. . Christ Episcopal Church invites the community to attend their 10 a.m. Sunday worship service on October 5th. At this service, before the Holy Eucharist/Mass is offered, Ms. Helen Boxwill will be the Guest Preacher with a special message to share and an audio-visual presentation. Her sermon will describe her charitable in Ethiopia, what life is like for the children there, and how our support of the Untied Nations Millennium Goals in Ethiopia can benefit us all.

Ms. Boxwill is the President and Director of h_ Empower, Inc. (According to its website www.h2empower.org, the h_ stands for hope & humanity, happiness & harmony, higher learning & health, heart & heritage, and hard work & help.) Her organization is dedicated to improving lives in Africa, especially in rural southern Ethiopia, through education and sustainable development through self-help and education.

Ms. Boxwill's charitable efforts came from her experience in 2003-04 as a volunteer teacher in Ethiopia, where she taught a Ministry of Education licensing program to college teachers at Hossanna Teacher Training College. While there, she was able to travel around the country, work with female students and local teachers, and set up a library system at Hossana, which is a rural agricultural community of 45,000 people in southern Ethiopia. For her efforts, Helen won the Teacher of the Year Award from her sponsoring agency, International Foundation for Education & Self Help.

Since 2005 she has spearheaded a campaign to send books to various schools in Ethiopia. So far 60,000 books in the English language have been sent to 5 colleges, 10 primary schools, 2 secondary schools, 4 private schools, and one town library. In addition, h2Empower is raising money to fund a school library in Hossana's largest primary school which serves 4,000 children ages 7-13.

A Long Island educator for the past 27 years, Ms. Boxwill has taught kindergarten through high school and been a Director of Language Arts and a Principal. She has earned Master's Degrees in Administration & Supervision, in Elementary Reading; and in Psychology. She is a long-time resident of Huntington and an active member of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Huntington.

Christ Episcopal Church is located on the corner of Chester Avenue and Jefferson Street in Garden City, three blocks west of New Hyde Park Road. Before the 10 a.m. Sunday service on October 5th, there will be the parish's annual Blessing of the Animals. The public is invited to come by the parish parking lot to have their pets blessed. A free-will offering will be taken to benefit the Guide Dog Foundation of Smithtown. For further information about parish events, contact the Rector, The Rev. Debra Low-Skinner, at (516) 775-2626 or via e-mail at christchurchgc@earthlink.net