Efforts Cited— Carol Fay [left] in Ghana, meeting with secondary school teachers in the town of Kaleo.

Carol Fay, who has been teaching religious studies at Academy of the Holy Angels in Demarest for 27 years, is the recipient of this year’s New Jersey Pax Christi Dorothy Day Peacemaker Award.

“It’s very humbling because I know there are so many people in the state that are doing amazing things,” Fay responded about the honor.

Fay’s focus at Academy of the Holy Angels has been the integration of social justice and Catholic social teaching into, not only religious studies courses, but the entire curriculum.

To accomplish this, Fay has a varied approach: “First, we look at Church documents and learn the principles and purpose of its social teaching,” she noted. “Part of the process includes putting the students in touch with the people we’re talking about — those involved in social justice. We also get students involved in the community so that they have a sense of connection to the places where they are trying to effect change.”

At Holy Angels, Fay moderates the Amnesty International Chapter, and has traveled to Nicaragua twice with Witness for Peace to accompany people in danger and study the effects of U.S. economic policies on the poor of that country.

“I would say that in all of my travels, I have found that people in the developing world know a lot more about how the world works than in the developed world. We can afford to take certain things for granted in a way that they can not,” Fay observed.

After her trips to Nicaragua, her group issued reports to the World Bank and the U.S. Agency for International Development.

She has also traveled twice to Ghana with Catholic Relief Services as a participant in a program for Catholic secondary school teachers to learn firsthand the problems of the poorest populations and how to infuse Catholic social teaching into the curriculum.

When asked the greatest way to effect change, Fay simply answered, “Awareness. We have to create awareness before we can actually create change. Having come back from Nicaragua, and seen the free trade zone and sweat shops, I told my students about it. They asked me which companies were involved; then, they arranged a ‘fashion show’ of clothes in their closet that had probably been made in sweatshops. The whole thing raised a lot of awareness. They’ve also done a lot of letter writing,” she said.

Fay noted that receiving the award, despite the fact that she is not in public service, is a reminder that, “every person is called to be a peacemaker,” and concluded by asserting, “I am going to continue the struggle.”

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