Students at St. Paul’s School in Yorkton are busy this week, but not with the typical homework.

For an hour after school each day, the 40 students in the elementary school’s leadership group is getting in the holiday spirit, working on their annual advent service project.

“During advent we are always trying to do different service projects in our school, get our kids to see beyond ourselves at this time of year when our Christmas wish lists can be kind of large,” says Vice Principal Kimberly Poncelet.

For this year’s project, the elementary school is working with the Sole Hope Project. The students are tracing and cutting donated denim pieces, which will be sent to Uganda and made into shoes.

“Lots of these children are running and playing all day in bare feet because they don’t have shoes, and so their feet are becoming cracked,” Poncelet told CTV News. “And there’s a parasite called the jigger that then ends up inhabiting itself into the foot and causing lots of pain. It’s becoming very debilitating for these children, preventing them from playing, preventing them from going to school.”

The school, which is in the Christ the Teacher School Division, completes a “service project” each year, but Poncelet says this year, they wanted to do something a little different.

“We are constantly raising money and it’s so nice for them to actually physically be able to put their hands on a service project and know they’re helping someone else in the world,” says Poncelet.

Alyssa Popowich is a grade eight student helping with the project. She says it’s important to give back.

“We have the privilege of going to school every day, wearing shoes, good quality clothes, having good education, jobs, but some people in the world don’t even get that,” says Popowich. “I’m having a blast knowing that I’m doing good and it’s not even that hard. It’s like a simple step can change someone’s life.”

The students plan to send over enough denim pieces to make 50 new pairs of shoes, and they hope to have them shipped out by Dec. 20.