Healing Spaces: Changing Spaces, Healing Lives
Healing Spaces: Changing Spaces, Healing Lives
Healing Spaces is a club that brings together more than sixty students every year to design and transform the living space of a local community member in need. The club was started in 2007 by science teacher, Marti Andreski. Under her leadership, the club completed a renovation of a young girls’ bedroom. In 2008, Steve Oelschlager and Lissa Ladouceur became the co-moderaters of Healing Spaces. When Steve retired in 2019, Alexandra Stevenson took his place as co-moderater.
During the last seventeen years, Healing Spaces has completed fourteen makeovers, with only COVID-19 really preventing projects in 2020 and 2021. So far, beneficiaries have included several children in hospice due to cancer, a battered women’s shelter, a sober living house, a halfway house for girls, a nursery for children of families in crisis, a young man in a wheelchair, and local community members who have lost loved ones. In their wake, the students of Healing Spaces have left behind beautifully decorated rooms, countless smiles, and, in some cases, a new lease on life.
Each annual project begins with a fundraiser in late fall through early spring to solicit donations from the De La Salle community as well as friends and relatives. It is this communal generosity – sometimes amounting to $10,000 or more – that helps drive the level of transformation that takes place.
The makeovers themselves can take anywhere from a couple of days to a couple of weeks to implement, depending on the nature of the work involved. However, planning takes months. Students typically organize themselves into teams and work in shifts to complete their tasks. For instance, there is normally a prep team that prepares the space for work, a painting team, a furniture moving team, an assembly team, and a landscaping team (if needed). In the background are a bevy of adult volunteers to help guide and teach techniques to the students throughout the course of their work.
Up until three years ago, the design concepts and vision for each Healing Spaces initiative were the brainchild of Sharon Kennedy Gerlach, a De La Salle parent whose son Glenn graduated in 2009. For fourteen years, Sharon helped deliver beauty and comfort while effortlessly tapping into the style and interests of the recipient for her visionary designs. However, Sharon’s sad passing from an aggressive form of brain cancer in March 2021 has meant that her daughter, Sheila Gerlach – along with De La Salle parent Bonnie Zumbo – has now taken on the design role.
Under this new leadership, Healing Spaces created a revitalized bedroom, bathroom, and living room in 2022 for Dylan Mandell. Dylan, who was a senior at Campolindo at the time, was suffering from a rare form of bone cancer called Rhabdomyosarcoma and was in need of a refresh to help him through the tough times ahead. This year, the club also took on a redesign for local widower Pat Everette, who needed help improving her living room, dining room, and backyard following the death of her husband Oliver, a 28-year Navy veteran.
“Our students learn that healing isn’t just about paint and furniture—it’s about showing up for someone when they need it most,” says longtime moderator Lissa Ladouceur. “If the next 20 years are anything like the first, I can only imagine how much more beauty, empathy, and hope our students will create.”
As Healing Spaces looks ahead to its next 20 years, its mission remains as vital as ever—creating comfort, dignity, and hope through service, creativity, and compassion. What began as a small act of kindness in 2007 has grown into a powerful tradition of community and connection. Each project tells a story not just of transformation, but of the lasting bonds formed between students, families, and the people whose lives they touch.
The future of Healing Spaces will continue to evolve with each new generation of Spartans who bring their hearts, hands, and ideas to the work. Whether redesigning a single room or reimagining what healing can look like in a community, the club will keep living out the Lasallian call to serve with faith, respect, and love.
To view videos of previous Healing Spaces Projects, click the links below:
- 2009 Healing Spaces Project
- 2010 Healing Spaces Project
- 2016 Healing Spaces Project
- 2017 Healing Spaces Project
To read other articles about the De La Salle Healing Spaces Club, click the links below: