The 2016 Immokalee GIFT travel group: (Back, L-R) Jimmy Menkhaus, Ph.D., Taylor Fragale, Jordyn Hays, Maureen Grady, Aubrey Hering, Katie Ellsworth, Nicole Miller, Cody Feikles (Front, L-R) Carly Mizner-Garofalo, Ashley Chismar and Katie Hutchison. families. People want to share their stories, and they don’t want handouts. All they want is for us to tell their story when we go home.” Menkhaus does just that, using Immokalee in his ethics class to teach about what Pope Francis calls “the globalization of indifference.” The message of the first Jesuit Pope resonates deeply with Menkhaus, who had a thoroughly Jesuit education at Cincinnati’s St. Xavier High School and at John Carroll University in Cleveland.
When asked why he goes to Immokalee, Menkhaus quoted another Jesuit, the Rev. Peter Hans Kolvenbach: “When the heart is touched by direct experience, the mind may be challenged to change.”
“The more we can bring the reality of the world to students … the more they’ll be inspired to challenge that notion of the globalization of indifference.”
“A Catholic education seeks to create an environment that touches the heart,” Menkhaus said. “You can’t take every student to a location, but the more we can bring the reality of the world to students and show how it connects to their experience, the more they’ll be inspired to challenge that notion of the globalization of indifference.”
For Menkhaus, inspiration came in the form of a boy with a tattered backpack. “His school folders were falling out because it wasn’t really a backpack anymore,” Menkhaus remembers. “His teacher explained that the boy’s mom told him that he has to go three more years until they can afford to get him a new backpack. I thought how I have several backpacks in my house, and I thought about how he was trying to carry his stuff home, physically and metaphorically, but that it might fall out through no fault of his. There are a lot of kids who are trying to do the right thing, but the system is fighting against them. When I think of Immokalee, I’ll always remember the sight of that boy’s folders just barely hanging on in his backpack.”
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