Resource Name:Society of St. Vincent de Paul – Immaculate Heart of Mary
Resource Type:Community
Service Type:church, religion, ministry, Bible, God, faith, worship, gospel, Jesus, prayer, catholic, food bank, utility assistance, rent assistance, mortgage assistance, crisis
Date Last Updated:February 15, 2024
Food
Our first objective is to ensure the families we help have access to food. We have an outstanding pantry at Chamblee that provides meat, fresh food, canned and dry goods, and home necessities. Our neighbors-in-need select their own products in a shop-through service at the pantry. We make referrals to other pantries if they are more convenient. We need more volunteers to help in all food related tasks.
We also help our clients to apply for government programs such as SNAP (generally known as food stamps). We have a full-time associate in charge of helping families to get through the paperwork.
Financial Assistance
We visit families at home or by phone to provide financial assistance when they experience an emergency such as a loss of job or an illness. We help pay rent and/or utilities and aid our clients to procure additional assistance from other sources. We have the limited resources generously given by our parishioners; we leverage these funds by putting them together with monies from government agencies and/or other non-profit organizations.
When we do home visits, we do it in teams of two Vincentians. We are always in need of more volunteers to learn how to conduct home visits and access resources to enhance our limited funds. This is an especially rewarding and challenging role within our ministry.
Health Care
We would like every family to have access to professional health care. We are in the process of building an infrastructure to achieve our goal. For example, we have a pharmacy that distributes free medicine for many chronic conditions. We are also developing relationships with health care providers and government programs to enroll our neighbors-in-need in health services or to obtain health insurance. We are looking for parishioners with expertise in the health industry to help us be more effective in this endeavor. If you have any experience in this field, please think about joining our team.
Special programs
We currently have two special yearly programs: food for Thanksgiving dinners and presents for children in Christmas. Both the food and presents are bought and distributed by our parishioners; we only organize the system for making it possible. The two programs are avenues for our parishioners to have a direct contact with our neighbors-in-need and experience the reward and joy of helping others.
We also have food and clothing drives twice a year. In these drives we ask our parishioners to bring food and lightly used clothes and we take them to our pantry and our Thrift Store.
New Programs
We would like to start other special programs. For example, we would like to fund scholarships for one week summer camps for underprivileged children. To do it, we need more volunteers to organize the system and procure the funds. We are looking for younger parishioners open to new ideas on how to help underprivileged families to reach their full potential. If you have computer, financial, or management skills, and you are ready to commit some time to serving the poor and the voiceless, we urge you to contact us and explore creative ways for fulfilling your call to service.
If you want to join our chapter, please send a message to the leader.
Ministry Leader: Javier Lerch
2855 Briarcliff Rd NE
Atlanta, Georgia 30329-2586
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