Social Justice & Outreach Committee News
by Janet Lane, Adam Russ, Diana Glick and Tim Williams
November marks the time of year when the Social Justice and Outreach Committee begins asking for your donations toward a long-standing St. Martin’s outreach effort through which we offer food assistance to local families in need during the week of Thanksgiving. This program was named after St. Martin’s parishioner Christine Blanchard, who started the program many years ago with a special focus on helping local migrant families. Still today, the families served in this program are the often underserved and unnoticed families in Davis.
This year we intend to serve 81 families and 16 UC Davis students or more by giving them a Safeway gift card with which they can purchase food of their choosing for the Thanksgiving holiday. Our goal for this year is to be able to give a gift card of $100 to each of our 81 families and $40 to each of the 16 UC Davis students. Of course, the final amount of the gift cards will depend on the amount of money taken in.
The Two Amigos are coming out of retirement. The incentive by the Two Amigos (Brian Shontz and Tim Williams) is that if you meet or exceed the goal of serving 81 families and 16 students, we will entertain you. Our offer is we will be out on the Church lawn this spring and allow you to throw a water balloon at us! This is a new idea we conjured up (our sabbatical gave us time to come up with a new wild and crazy idea). If you have ever been on the receiving end of the sarcastic wit of Brian and/or Tim, here is a chance for you to return the favor and baptize us with a water balloon filled with holy water. Heaven knows these two could use another baptism.
The carefully-selected families come from a variety of sources: Montgomery Elementary School, the Davis Joint Unified School District Homeless Family Liaison, Cable Car Wash, and from St. Martin’s long-standing list of families. The UC Davis students in need will all be identified by the AB540 and Undocumented Student Center. Any money above the goal amount to serve these families and students will be used to purchase additional gift cards that will be split between the Montgomery Elementary School and UCD AB540 Center, which both have identified a definite need for food cards to help the many underserved families and students they serve.
The families will be asked to come to St. Martin’s to pick up their gift cards, and we invite the participation of parishioners who wish to be there to welcome the families and/or help with the distribution of gift cards. The distribution will take place on Monday, November 25 (5:30 – 6:30 pm) and Tuesday, November 26 (10:00 – 11:00 am).
If you have already donated, we thank you. Monetary donations (of any amount) that will allow us to purchase the gift cards will be accepted through November 17. Look for the Social Justice and Outreach table after both services or put your check in the offering plate made out to St. Martin’s Church with “Thanksgiving Project” in the memo line. The table will be staffed on November 3, 10 and 17 after both Sunday services.
Given that many agencies provide assistance at Christmas and not at Thanksgiving, the $100 and $40 gift cards make a very significant impact and are of major assistance to the families and students who receive them right before the Thanksgiving holiday. Please feel free to contact a Social Justice and Outreach Committee member or the church office (530-756-0444; info@churchofstmartin.org) if you have any questions or want to get involved.