Meeting the Challenge of Stewardship
The Sisters of Mercy of the Americas, the sponsoring agency of Mt. Mercy Academy, has incorporated the following Mission Statement in our school’s guiding documents:
“As women of Mercy we are called ‘to act in harmony and interdependence with all creation as stewards of the Earth’s resources. We do this through recycling programs and environmental education which serves our local community”
Based upon this imperative, Mt. Mercy students collaborated with the administration at Mt. Mercy to put the following programs into place during the 2008-2009 school year:
Recycling Programs
Paper recycling bins throughout the school. To date, alongside the efforts of Metro Waste Paper Recovery, students have captured for recycling over 4 tons of paper. Also, the Mt. Mercy Environmental Awareness Club collects discarded cell phones to be donated to organizations that assist women in crises. Tshi club also participated in a re-treeing of Buffalo project.
Educational Programs
A purposeful integration of environmental awareness into mathematics, science, social sciences, English and religion curriculum has been implemented.

The Sisters asked the girls to take over the development and planning of further greening efforts. MMA administration responded by sponsoring six of girls (Nicole Tombolesi, Michelle Domes, Stephanie Khoury, Leah Moran, Katie Farr and Rylie Schreiber) to the Environmental Youth Summit held at Park School on April 24 & 25. Meeting with student groups from 7 other public and private schools, the girls first worked on improving their leadership and creative problem solving skills and then dove into the task of identifying MMA’s next environmental challenge.