Outreach Commission Report 2024
Jesus said: “‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.” – Matthew 22: 38 – 40.
In 2024, the Outreach ministries of St. Paul’s supported the parish’s efforts to do the work of love in this world. By following this holy command to love, we help to meet the ever-changing needs of our community. But this work also transforms our relationships with God and one another, and even our own hearts. We thank you for your participation in this ongoing work!
The Church’s outreach efforts are supported by parishioner donations, and several fundraising events held during the year. We held two major Outreach fundraisers this year – our three Lenten Fish Fries, and our Fall Harvest Festival Dinner. Thank you to parishioner John Sozansky and all of the volunteers that helped in all of those very successful (and delicious) events! We netted approximately $6,000 at our fish fries and donated 206 meals’ worth of leftover food to the Light of Life Ministries shelter. We netted $1,998 at Harvest Fest. In conjunction with the Pickwick Boys men’s lunch group, in December we cooked and delivered two meals for 75 people each to Bethlehem Haven. In addition to these meals, Pickwick Boys raised $360 for Outreach and provided 20 more pounds of chicken to use for feeding programs ahead! Also, John Sozansky catered the Church Pension Fund meeting at St. Paul’s in December at the beginning of the month as an Outreach benefit. Between this catering, and John’s soup sale that weekend, we raised an additional $2000 for St. Paul’s Outreach.
Some of the biggest news of 2024 was our Summer of Suppers! One of the major strands of the summer was addressing food insecurity in our communities. We kicked off the summer with a volunteer-led “Cooking For Groups” training, which expanded the pool of volunteers with the skills to prepare large meals for our community partners. Then, during the summer, over 130 volunteers from St. Paul’s provided:
– Over 1,800 meals,
– On 28 different occasions,
– With 8 different community partners in the South Hills, downtown Pittsburgh, the Hill District, Homewood, and the South Side.
The true number is even higher, as any leftover meals and ingredients are taken by volunteers to local community partners for reuse and distribution.
We worked to meet emergency needs, resulting in an increase over the 1,200 meals we had initially planned to serve. We cooked monthly meals for 50 people for the Neighborhood Resilience Project, and 100 people for the Table at Hot Metal Bridge Faith community, during the summer. When the Second Avenue Commons shelter was damaged by fire, St. Paul’s volunteers arrived at 5am to cook and transport breakfast sandwiches for 100 people. The shelter was so pleased they asked us to provide a meal on the 4th of July a few days later – and so we quickly pulled together a meal for 100 people there, and 50 people at Neighborhood Resilience Project! St. Paul’s also provided a hot lunch for the children and families attending the week-long Vacation Bible School at Holy Cross Episcopal Church in Homewood.
We continued to cook for Neighborhood Resilience Project on a monthly basis as our program year began. Unfortunately, the Table at Hot Metal Bridge Faith Community program was discontinued, and we celebrated by helping to prepare one final Thanksgiving meal there, which also provided enough leftover food to be shared with Light of Life Ministries. In 2024, we started preparing regular meals for 75 people at Bethlehem Haven. Brendan Copp, Bethlehem Haven and Second Avenue Commons’ Volunteer and Engagement Coordinator, recently wrote St. Paul’s: Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!! Thank you for everything you have done for us in the past few months. You quickly became one of our biggest donors and I hope you know the impact your meals have on our persons served. It’s enormous! We have also started helping cook and serve Friday night dinners at Shepherd Wellness Community, a ministry for people living with HIV/AIDS. St. Paul’s also sponsored Shepherd Wellness’s Christmas party and dinner!
In addition, this summer we worked with St. John Evangelical Lutheran Church in Carnegie to distribute lunches and groceries on a weekly basis. Every other week, St. Paul’s shopped for, and packed, 55 grocery bags. This program was funded, in large part, by a $3,000 grant from St. Paul’s Outreach Commission.
This spring, St. Paul’s Outreach Commission donated $1,000 to the Episcopal Diocese of Pittsburgh Garden Grants program. These grants support Episcopal parishes and organizations in the Diocese of Pittsburgh to create new vegetable gardens or to support already functioning gardens with small material needs. The produce that is grown is distributed through local food pantries and organization-based outreach efforts. We also provided Pat and Carolyn Hurd $2,000 to purchase items needed for the Blessed Mustard Seed Babies Home in Kampala, Uganda, during their two trips there, and $500 to PRYSE Academy, a summer camp for refugee youth. This winter, St. Paul’s also provided support for ARYSE, The Alliance for Refugee Youth Support & Education, and because the $250 donation was strategically scheduled during a donor matching event, ARYSE received $500.
We provided breakfast food for a feeding program at Orchard Hill Christian Academy in Apollo, PA. When that program was wound down, we used the funds the Outreach Commission had been given for other food insecurity projects, such as the purchase of 34 turkeys for Thanksgiving meals distributed by Bethany Lutheran in Dormont, as well as $300 to purchase reusable totes for clients to take their groceries home from the Trinity Walk-In Food Pantry.
St. Paul’s collected gifts in November and December for its annual Angel Tree. Items were collected for Agape Heart International, the Sto Rox Family Center, the Carnegie Family Center, Jeremiah’s Place, the Neighborhood Resilience Project, Holy Family Institute, and the Boys and Girls’ Club, as well as several local refugee families. We collected 564 presents, including almost 100 last-minute emergency requests. The approximate value of these gifts was $24,445. This is the largest number of Angel Tree gifts we have provided as a parish! Thanks to a grant from St. Paul’s Endowment, a $400 gift from Cub Scout Pack 284 after their pancake breakfast, and donations from St. Paul’s parishioners, we were able to purchase many urgently needed gifts at the last minute.
St. Paul’s parishioners donated food for the South Hills Food Pantry – especially through our Reverse Advent Calendar, during which parishioners purchased and delivered bags of 25 food staples. Our Confirmation youth visited there several times to help, and to pack Thanksgiving meal bags, as well as to help pack weekend meal backpacks at NRP.
Our lunch packing on the first Saturday of the month has continued to grow! Now, once a month, we pack 75 meals for Bethlehem Haven, 120 meals for Second Avenue Commons, and 150 meals for NRP. We were also approached by the sophomore class at Mt. Lebanon High School to help plan a service day. We helped those youth plan a day where we packed 120 lunches for Bethlehem Haven. Lunch packing is a consistently very well-attended, family – friendly opportunity that attracts volunteers from St. Paul’s, as well as community members unaffiliated with the parish looking for an opportunity to serve others.
Other Outreach collections included Halloween candy, which was packed by the parish at our Ministry Fair for Meals on Wheels, South Hills Food Pantry, and Neighborhood Resilience Project, and menstrual hygiene supplies, for St. John’s Free Fridge and Hello Neighbor. In addition, we have had an ongoing collection of coats and other winter weather supplies for Hello Neighbor.
In August, St. Paul’s hosted a blood drive for the Red Cross and provided 41 units of badly-needed blood products. This was the largest collection we have done so far, and we look forward to hosting another soon!
The vision of the St. Paul’s Outreach Commission is to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, care for the sick, and love our neighbor. Thank you to everyone who donated, pledged, prayed, volunteered, or in any other way supported this mission! For more information about St. Paul’s Outreach ministries, and/or to volunteer, please contact the Rev. Erin Morey, at [email protected] or 412-531-7153 ext. 13.
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