By Lois Rogers | Correspondent

It won’t be too long before Inez Tello and her two sons move into the house St. Rose of Lima Parish, Freehold, and Colts Neck Reformed Church partnered with Habitat for Humanity to build.

The dedication at the Center Street, Freehold home will be celebrated July 12 at 12:30 p.m., complete with speeches, prayerful dedications, presentation of gifts, a house tour and refreshments.

But participation from the parish and St. Rose School didn’t stop just because the work was nearing completion.

As part of the project, both parishes committed to raise the necessary funding to offset the entire cost of construction of the home. The “blitz build” by scores of volunteers from both religious communities commenced at the end of April.

But even as the effort headed toward its marvelous conclusion, enthusiastic work on the part of parishioners and pupils and the PTA of St. Rose School continued on behalf of the project with several initiatives of their own.

Before St. Rose School went on summer break, students and PTA members kicked into high gear, joining in one of the parish fundraising efforts.

One way the parish was raising funds for the Habitat House was by having people purchase roofing shingles at $10 each. In an email, PTA president Tiffany Field noted that the school “felt the students could help this family by buying shingles.”

“The Student Council was in charge of placing containers in the classrooms for the students to place their donation. It was a two–week fundraiser,” she noted, adding that a large paper house was placed in in the main hallway and every $10 shingle purchased by each classroom was represented by a paper shingle on the roof.

Ann Marie Walker, moderator of the Student Council and seventh grade math and social studies teacher talked about how successful the effort was. “We raised $2,040 for the Habitat project with the shingles. The $2,040 bought that amount of shingles,” she said with pride.

In another project supported by the PTA, students poured their efforts into getting lunches together for the volunteers working on the house. The organization purchased the sandwiches – ham and cheese, turkey with chips and the like – and the students wrapped them and put together individual lunch bags, each with a drink, sandwich and snack, wrote Field.

She noted that a group of students were selected from different class levels to help distribute the bagged lunches to all of the helpers building the house.