Outreach at Grace Church

The Outreach Commission
The Outreach Commission organizes the appeal and distribution of the Christmas and Easter offerings to projects that meet basic human needs, including food, clothing, and shelter and in which individual parishioners are already involved as support to their particular actions of Christian witness. The Commission also serves as the umbrella organization for other outreach projects that the parish supports, seeing to it that there are volunteers from the congregation for the Not Bread Alone soup kitchen, for the Emergency Cot Program in Northampton, and for an annual campaign to solicit donated food for the Amherst Survival Center. Grace Church is a covenant church with Habitat for Humanity and with Bread for the World. OMC sponsors the annual Oxfam Fast as well as films, lectures, and discussions of national and international conflicts and human needs. Outreach Ministries Commission meets every first Monday night at 6:00 in the Parker Room. If you are interested in being a member of the Commission, please contact one of the clergy or Anne Scarff (549-0407).

Local Ministries And Agencies That We Support With Our Time, Talents And Treasure

• Amherst Survival Center
  Amherst Survival Center is a regional resource providing food, clothing and community through volunteer efforts.
  
  
• Not Bread Alone Soup Kitchen
  Not Bread Alone is a soup kitchen located at First Congregational Church in Amherst, MA. It serves meals Wednesdays and on weekends.
  
  
• Interfaith Cot Shelter
  The Hampshire County Interfaith Cot Shelter provides overnight shelter for adults during the coldest 6-months of the year. It opens on November 1st. The Interfaith Shelter operates in partnership with the City of Northampton and Friends of the Hampshire County Homeless.

  We at Grace prepare a meal for the Shelter in Northampton (43 Center Street), once a month, November through April, for the 20 guests and five volunteers.  There are several ways you can volunteer:  You could make a part of a meal, such as a salad, a main dish, or a dessert to be taken in by another volunteer who would serve at the Shelter during the dinner time, about 5:45 to 7:30, or you could be a server at the shelter during that time, or you could do both as many do.  We hope to gather a different team for each of the six monthly dates, sharing the joy of service as broadly as possible.   Please consider joining one of the teams. The dates for us this year are as follows: November 12; December 10; January 14; February 11; March 11; and April 8.  For more information or to join a team, talk to Bob Hawley or Mary McCarthy (253-3582), or Brendan Sullivan (256-4667).

Millennium Development Goals (MDG's)
A note from General Convention

MDGs? What are those? I wondered this often enough over the last year or two whenever the term was dropped into conversation. At General Convention last month the Episcopalians for Global Reconciliation (EGR) space in the Exhibition Hall was one aisle over from the reconciliation booth, where I spent my time. Every booth advertising a cause, a process, or goods for sale gave away free stuff to lure people a little closer, perhaps even to chat. Our booth gave out pins, prayer cards, and fliers. EGR had the best peanuts in the hall, and so that was where I stopped by several times a day when life was slow in reconciliation. I am very thankful for the peanuts, because if I scooped up the peanuts, I felt I had to hang around and find out more about the EGR and, in particular, the MDGs, which was one of their main educational efforts.

MDGs is the acronym for a summons to the world from the UN to help defeat deep world poverty and its effects. Every day at Convention, representatives from the EGR handed out cards to passers-by on the way to the daily Eucharist. The first card listed the eight goals:

1. Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
2. Achieve universal primary education
3. Promote gender equality and empowerwomen
4. Reduce child mortality
5. Improve maternal health
6. Combat HIV and AIDS, malaria and other diseases
7. Ensure environmental sustainability, and
8. Create a global partnership for development with a focus on debt, aid, and trade

Each subsequent day the card focused on one of the goals, and indicated what one person could do, what one parish could do, and what one diocese could do. One of the mantras of this campaign is “0.7%”, which calls for each diocese, each parish, and each individual to give 0.7% of their income to achieve these goals by 2015. Our diocese has made this commitment, as have Grace Church and some parish members. The General Convention made it a major outreach priority for the Episcopal Church. Over the next weeks and months Grace Church will be offering information and occasions to hear speakers so that the MDGs will become more meaningful to us than just another acronym; perhaps there will also be opportunities for mission-focused trips. The campaign has many features that make it particularly appealing; one of these is the hope that frames this whole endeavor “to make poverty history.” For more information, see http://www.e4gr.org.

Ministries and Agencies that Further the Unite Nations Millenium Development Goals:

• St. Matthieu, Haiti
  To honor Grace Church's support of the Millennium Development Goals, the vestry is raising money and awareness for the children of St Matthieu, Haiti whose school and schooling are foundering.
• Episcopal Relief and Development
  Working in partnership with the worldwide Church, ecumenical agencies and local organizations, Episcopal Relief & Development saves lives and strengthens communities around the world.
• Five Talents International
  Empowering the poor by providing innovative savings and microcredit programs, business training and spiritual development..
• Heifer Project
  In FY2007, Heifer had 867 active projects in 53 countries/provinces and 28 U.S. states. Heifer projects around the world help families achieve self-reliance through the gift of livestock and training. Gifts are passed from recipient to recipient until entire communities are transformed.
• Oxfam
  A partnership of thirteen organizations working together to find lasting solutions to poverty and injustice.
• Diocesan Liberian Task Force
  For five years, our Diocese has been praying and seeking to serve the people of Liberia who have suffered so much through 18 years of civil war.

Fourth Sunday Offerings, Christmas and Easter Collections

Grace Church has a tradition of donating colections gathered on Christmas, Easter and the fourth Sunday of each month to worthy causes suggested by the community.

Grace members may apply for funding for the non-profit, social outreach organizations (local, national, international) that they are involved with or that they advocate for. The applications should be to (1) meet human needs, especially for food, clothing and shelter (2) value the spiritual needs of those they serve for respect, dignity, and freedom (3) represent balanced and diversified ways of meeting local, national, and global priorities (4) are espoused by our parishioners and, if possible, directly involve parish members in their work and (5) keep us informed of their work and provide us with basic financial information to insure accountability.

Rector's Discretionary Fund

The Rector's Discretionary Fund is a pool of money generously donated by members of Grace Church, earmarked for emergencies, special circumstances, and individuals in acute need. In recent years, it has enabled us to provide support for victims of earthquakes and hurricanes, assistance with medical bills of poor parishioners, and help with groceries, fuel bills, and rent (with a limit of up to $150-200 per person). While the needs of the world can seem overwhelming, and we seldom have as much in the fund as we would wish, we do our best to send money where it might do the most good.