Ignatian Volunteer Corps to honor CCSJ’S Sr. Missy Gugerty

Catherine (Missy) Gugerty, SSND, M.S. ‘98, has been selected to receive the Ignatian Volunteer Corps Baltimore Region’s 2012 Della Strada award in recognition of her demonstration of the Ignatian values of service to the poor, and of working and educating for a just society. The award will be presented at an Evening of Gratitude at Loyola Blakefield on Sunday, April 22, at 4 p.m.

Sr. Gugerty, a native of Baltimore, has served as the director of Loyola’s Center for Community Service and Justice (CCSJ) since 2002. For four years prior to that she was the co-director. Sr. Gugerty oversees a program through which approximately 80 percent of Loyola undergraduate students as well as others in the Loyola community participate in volunteer service locally, nationally, and internationally. CCSJ provides an environment where participants are prepared for their service, offer service and presence to people who are poor and marginalized, and are strongly encouraged to reflect on their service experience. As a result, the volunteers become aware of systemic injustice and often challenge unjust systems and structures.

Sr. Gugerty previously served as assistant director of the Beans and Bread Meal Program and Homeless Outreach Center, manager of Our Daily Bread, and director of Christopher Place, a shelter for men experiencing homelessness. She earned a B.A. in Sociology from Notre Dame of Maryland University and has been a School Sister of Notre Dame since 1984.

Since 2007, Sr. Gugerty has volunteered as a spiritual reflector for the Baltimore region of the Ignatian Volunteer Corps. In this role, she meets monthly with these senior volunteers to reflect with them on their service experience, helping them to probe the deeper meaning of their service and to identify and explore where they find God in their volunteer work.

Tickets for the Evening of Gratitude are available on the Ignatian Volunteer Corps website. Click on “Baltimore” for more information.