By Deacon Tom Baker
For many IVC volunteers, their placement with a nonprofit organization is a chance to explore a completely new environment. Armand Della Porta, however, ended up back somewhere very familiar: his own alma mater, the Jesuit-run St. Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia, where as an IVC volunteer he works one to two days a week as part of the mission and ministry team.
“In many ways it’s a much better school now than when I was there,” Armand notes. “For example, back then there was no service requirement for the students.” Part of Armand’s assignment at The Prep is to accompany students to their community service projects around the Philadelphia area. On one chilly March morning, he had driven nine students in a school van to a monthly food pantry that is part of the Sisters of St. Joseph’s SSJ Neighborhood Center in Camden, NJ, where they spent the day organizing pallets of donated food for the hundreds of families who depend on the pantry. The Prep has relationships with other local nonprofits where Armand brings students (and pitches in alongside them), and he has also worked as a team member at The Prep’s annual sophomore retreat. “I love working with the kids,” he says, “and enjoy their youthful innocence.”
A retired civil defense lawyer, Armand jokes that his volunteer work is atonement for his years of law practice. But clearly, the Ignatian charism is part of his DNA: He is also a graduate of Georgetown, and both of his children are former Jesuit Volunteer Corps members. To anyone thinking about volunteering with IVC, he says, “It is a great way to try to make a difference, and to do it with like-minded people with the same goal.”
