June 19 2022

June 19

The activity around the Center has been continually increasing. We’ve expanded our services a little to accept walk-in guests that don’t have appointments. Many people we serve don’t have phones or aren’t aware of our procedures; some end up in emergency situations. We are trying to help accommodate them. Our number one concern is always if they are in need of food – we don’t ever want to deny anyone the access to food. If the ‘walk-ins’ are in need of other items, we are trying to do as best we can. One day last week, we had eleven walk-ins in addition to guests with appointments - that was a challenging day!

The Knights of Columbus held their first ‘store-front’ food collection at the Piggly Wiggly in Leland. This was the first on-site store event since we had shut down for Covid in March of 2020. It was quite a successful event - 103 bags of food, totaling 750#, as well as $622 in cash donations. Job well done, Knights! At the moment, our meat supply is extremely low; we’ll use some of these funds to provide meat for our guests.

The Catholic Daughters did their yearly collection for Outreach; they had asked me what our needs were and I requested towels and cleaning products. I walked into my office the other day to find a bounty of towels and cleaning items from their meeting the evening before. Thanks, ladies!

I’ve received a few more calls about potential volunteers; I’m adding them to my list since we’ll need more help in the fall for sure. We are also in discussions with UNCW Social Work department regarding bringing an intern on board. (We had been scheduled to have one before ,,,, and that plan was disrupted by Covid too.)

We are hoping to be able to open the doors and get back to full service in the fall. Once the parish offices re-locate upstairs, we’ll be happy to have guests back in the building and build our volunteer staff back up (provided Covid doesn’t disrupt our plans.)

Save the date! October 29 is our tentative date for our next Quarter Auction; it’s been 3 years since our last one and we miss it! It’s a great social event and we look forward to our friends joining us for a FUNdraiser. We’ll keep you posted as the plans are finalized.

Slowly but surely, step by step, we’ll get things back to some version of ‘normal’.

Blessings,

Mary Ann