Group leaders have been attending training sessions at the Pastoral Center this month. Several spoke to The Pilot about their preparations for the march.

This will be Andrea Alberti's eighth year leading a group of high school students from St. Mary's High School in Lynn on the march, and in a phone conversation with The Pilot, Jan. 9, she said that 38 students will be going this year.

She said this is the 12th year St. Mary's will be attending the March for Life, and the administration is fully supportive of the event. She noted that a pro-life stance is "really imbued in the culture of the school."

Alberti said that in the past, students have said their favorites parts of the event include "the homily at Mass," or "looking back on the hill during the march and seeing the hundreds of thousands of people."

"We love the program they put out, and we're happy to be a part of it and follow it," she said of the itinerary.

Meghan Lovett, the Assistant Principal at St. Augustine Elementary School in Andover, told The Pilot at a Witness to Life Leadership Team Training event at the Pastoral Center, Jan. 12, that this is her second year bringing a group of students to the March for Life.

This year, six students from St. Augustine will be going, and Lovett said she will not allow her students to bring cellphones with them in order to make the trip a "prayerful journey."

She said the six students have been meeting two times a week, beginning before Christmas. Lovett said that the subjects of those meetings change, but she tries "to combine Scripture with more factual things about the trip itself."

To prepare around 25 middle school students traveling from Lawrence Catholic Academy for the march, Tyler Andradel, Director of Youth Ministry at the school, told The Pilot they have been instructed to pray at home.

"They're all taking their time basically get comfortable with prayer at home, because they know it will be a key part of the March for Life," he said at the team training event.