Pope Benedict XVI will celebrate his 81st birthday on April 16, his first day in Washington, D.C., so the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA) wants to give him a present.

So what do you get for the pope who has everything (he needs)?

The NCEA thought Benedict would appreciate the gift of America’s Catholic school students performing volunteer acts of charity.

So its “Birthday Blessings for Pope Benedict” project is collecting pledged volunteer hours — a kind of 21st century spiritual bouquet — in honor of the pope’s birthday.

Catholic students from across the country, including the Diocese of Honolulu, are participating, from the seminary and college level on down to preschool and including parish religious education programs. Schools and parishes are logging in pledged “Birthday Blessings” hours via a special NCEA website, ncea.catholic.org.

As of March 21, 87,754 U.S. students had pledged 539,782 hours. In Hawaii, 311 students have pledged 6,000 hours so far.

One of the first Hawaii schools to pledge service hours was St. John the Baptist School in Kalihi. The school’s principal, Dominican Sister Mary Lou Superio, said that students from kindergarten to eighth grade have been offering their prayer hours, including the Stations of the Cross and the rosary during Lent.

St. John’s sixth, seventh and eighth graders are also pledging the hours they spend in the school’s “Amazing Grace” program, making sandwiches for the homeless once a month.

The school is also including the hours the students in all grades spend raising money for the poor and veterans.

“It’s not only the money [raised] but the spiritual blessings” the students receive, Sister Mary Lou said.

Sacred Hearts Sister Katherine Francis Miller, the campus ministry director of Sacred Hearts Academy in Kaimuki, said the school’s high school students wrote on their regular community service hour forms what hours and projects they wanted to pledge to the “Birthday Blessings” project.

Examples of student service have included a girl who worked on Kahoolawe improving the island’s environmental conditions and students who volunteer on Saturdays with religion teacher Leo Delgado to feed the homeless at Kapiolani Park.

The Academy’s elementary division will also pledge hours.

“I think it’s a beautiful idea,” Sister Katherine said, “rather than just a gift, to think that the entire [country’s] youth are all doing service for the community in Pope Benedict’s name.”