CSB and SJU Host Annual Caritas Award Ceremony

05/15/2009

This year’s Saint Ben’s recipients of the award are Ashleigh Leitch '09, CSB senior and political science major from Willmar, and Marilyn and Joe Schmit, CSB alumna ’56 and SJU alumnus ’55, respectively.  

The Caritas Awards were established in 1995 with support from an anonymous donor. Each year, a CSB alumna, a SJU alumnus, one upperclass student from CSB and one upperclass student from SJU are chosen to receive the Caritas Award, which recognizes commitment to both service and social justice. The alumnae/i receive $1,500 to give to a volunteer organization in their name, and each student receives $500 for a volunteer organization of their choice.

Leitch is passionate about addressing international women’s issues from social, economic and legal standpoints. As Women’s Issues Representative for the CSB Student Senate, Leitch organized the Women’s Month 2007 initiatives. Through her service experience while studying abroad in Chile during fall semester 2007, she developed the idea of Banco Mariposa, a student-run micro-lending organization in partnership with CSB, which has since matured into an internship program for CSB and SJU students to work with Fondo Esperanza, a Chilean micro-lending organization. Leitch believes in using governmental and legal structures to work toward social justice. She interned for Sen. Amy Klobuchar in Washington, D.C., during summer 2007, and later volunteered with Anna Marie’s Alliance as a Court Monitor. Leitch applied to the Peace Corps, and hopes to attend law school to become an international women’s human rights attorney.

The Schmits have spent their entire 52 years of married life working for social justice on a local, national and global level. They pressured their elected representatives in the 1980s to stop funding the contra rebels in Nicaragua and spoke out against the production of land mines and nuclear weapons. Marilyn was arrested three times for protesting aid to the contra rebels and is a member of Women Against Military Madness. She gave 30 talks after her trip to Nicaragua in 1985. Joe raised eyebrows at a San Francisco physics conference in 1985 when he asked his colleagues for a moment of silence on the 40th anniversary of the atomic bomb attack on Hiroshima, Japan. Currently, Joe is an electrician for Habitat for Humanity, and has done taxes for low income and elderly people for 18 years. They both actively support efforts to close the School of the Americas, Fort Benning, Ga., provide supplies for needy school children in Nicaragua and struggling families in Mexico, and sponsor the Marilyn Scholl Schmit Scholarship for Peace Studies at CSB.

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