Vocations Awareness Week is Nov. 3-9, 2024
This fall we were so excited as a school community to have three alumni enter into seminary and religious life! Wanting to spread the word and celebrate with our current students, I asked if we could create a display in time for Vocations Awareness Week highlighting the vocations that have grow from our school. Once we settled on the location, the project became bigger than I imagined, both literally (this bulletin board is much larger than I expected- almost 12' across!) and figuratively (because the response was so wonderful- I've run out of room to feature everything)!
With the extra space, I decided to create three sections:
- One part highlighting specific vocations from our parish and school
- One section honoring our pope, bishop, pastor, and parochial vicar, as well as seminarians from our diocese
- And one part for "future" vocations- offering prayer cards, novenas, etc. for all students as well as highlighting different religious communities
In addition to creating my own info to hang on the board, I also reached out to some religious orders to see if they could send us any brochures or prayer cards- and boy, they came through! We received some awesome vocation swag to share with students! We also receive a poster and prayer cards from our Diocesan Office of Vocations, so this was a perfect central location to include everything. I wanted the board to be something interactive that encouraged the students to walk by and take something home with them.
And after creating this bulletin board, I've already had requests to share info about how I made it. I've created a sharable version of everything that I can, but this is definitely a bulletin board that will need to be customized to your school or parish. I've tried to make a few tools to help you get started and hopefully can aid with inspiration! Also, don't be intimidated by this giant board- remember it was bigger than I was planning and I had to fill the space! You could make a board honoring and supporting vocations that is any size- the most important part is to encourage your students to be praying for those in discernment, praying for those living our their vocation, and praying for their own future vocation.
P.S.- Just a note- we are already talking about making something to specifically honor and uphold marriage later this school year. The intention of this bulletin board was to highlight Vocations Awareness Week, which primarily focuses on the priesthood and religious life. So still more to come, not forgetting about the very important vocation of matrimony!
Here's all the details!
Items to add to the bulletin board
- Contact your diocesan vocations office (posters, prayer cards, etc.)
- Contact local religious orders (brochures, prayer cards, resources)
- Contact religious orders that have sisters/brothers serving in your diocese
- Reach out to other religious orders that you respect
- I would also recommend looking at the affordable resources available at Vianney Vocations. They have tons of brochures, booklets, and prayer cards that would be great for a vocation board (in addition to curriculum and books)
- Add coloring pages, printable prayer cards, brochures, etc. highlighting vocations, prayers for vocations, patrons of vocations, etc.
- Books to borrow about vocations
I added these awesome "Prayer for Priests" letter and St. John Vianney coloring page, both available from the talented Shari of Catholic Paper Goods as an easy activity kids could take with them. (Just a note, if you are planning on making copies of these for a whole school/parish, please make sure that you are reading her terms and using her license for bulk copies. Thanks for honoring the work of Catholic artists and creators!)
Title
I printed this out on brown kraft paper cardstock and cut it by hand, but you could do something similar with die cut letters or a cricut!
Click here for the "Here I am Lord" title with one letter per page (letters approx. 8.5" tall):
Click here for the "Here I am Lord" title with two letters per page (letters approx. 5.5" tall):
Template for highlighting individual vocations:
Click here for an editable template to display the pope, bishop, pastor, seminarians, etc. When you open this file, it will automatically make a copy so you can add your own information and photos. It also includes some saint quotes and headings that are also editable.
Tools for the bulletin board
Here are items that I ordered from Amazon to complete the bulletin board:
(Contain affiliate links)
- Clear brochure holders, 12 pieces in 2 different sizes (these have been perfect! My only issue is that I quickly ran out of space!)
- Clear flat tacks (I used these to attach the brochure holders to the bulletin board- and they have held quite well. They are a little longer than regular thumb tacks and the flat head is necessary so the items don't get stuck as they are pulled out, which would knock the whole thing down.)
- Clear shelves (these are excellent in theory, but have not worked as well using thumb tacks- a couple have fallen down a few times. I think they would be excellent if you were actually able to screw them in to the wall!)
- Bulletin board border- just in case someone wants it! I wanted something neutral and not to flashy, with a nod to our school colors (maroon and gold) so this was a great fit
Book List
And
click here for a post with a list of great books about Vocations:
St. Therese of Lisieux, pray for us!
St. John Vianney, pray for us!
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