Thank you Stone and Youngberg who were in last week to volunteer. The Pantry makeover project was a great success and will help our clients access healthy and nutritious food. Well done!
On March 11th, 2011 Father Alfred Center is hosting our annual Spring Fund Raiser Dinner for sponsors & families of our residents. The goal is to raise enough money to send our residents to the 2011 Northern California Convention of Narcotics Anonymous XXXIII (held this year in Sacramento CA on Saturday April 23rd, 2011).
“For persons rehabilitating from their addictions, sharing this day with thousands of recovering addicts will be an affirming experience of sobriety, a profound and meaningful support for their decision and efforts to turn their lives around towards a future free from the bonds of addiction.”
This year’s menu is:
Appetizers:
Entrée:
Dessert:
(menu is subject to change)
If you wish to make a donation to help send Father Alfred Center residents to the convention check please call:
Raynette Page-Johnson (425) 592-2880
Michael Hurd (415) 592-2891
The Spring Fund Raiser Dinner is an opportunity for family and friends to bridge gaps often caused during addiction. It provides an opportunity for them to begin to restore relationships in an safe & healthy environment, and to see the place where their loved ones are changing their lives.
It is often said that an addict can not find their way to recovery on their own. Community & mutual support are imperative in the process. The NA convention & the fund rasier dinner are two of the ways that a social model program like St. Anthony Foundation’s Father Alfred Center helps our residents stay connected, and stay clean.
Rosa Maria Cordova’s second grade class at Arrowhead Elementary School wanted to do something special for the holidays. Thanks to the miracle of the internet, they found St. Anthony’s. They decided to bring socks to school for our guests. The interesting thing is, Arrowhead Elementary School is in Phoenix, Arizona. The class collected and shipped socks for people in need a good 600 miles away. We sent them a video so they could see some of the people who come to St. Anthony’s for help and learn more about how people get poor.
We stashed the box away to save the socks for Christmas. All of them went into Christmas bags and were given out to our guests on Christmas day. Each and every person who ate at St. Anthony’s on Christmas, about 2500 people, got a big red bag with a hand knitted scarf, a donated chocolate bar, and a pair of socks. About 50 of those bags had socks from Arizona. Thank you, Mrs. Cordova’s class.
Kids. That word usually begins or ends a diatribe about people who are currently children or teens. There’s supposed to be something wrong with them. At present, the word is that they spend all their money on video games and all their time texting and they have no attention span, no attention span at all.
Someone forgot to tell the very young supporters of St. Anthony’s how kids behave.
Amy does not spend all her time texting. She spend a lot of it in December organizing a coat drive. She collected 500 coats for St. Anthony’s guests, enough so that her father had to rent a truck to deliver them at Curbside. Amy is 10.
Anthony is about the same age. He did not spend all his money on video games. He received $50 for Christmas and spent it on socks for the guests at St. Anthony’s. He was one of many people, most of them much older, who helped us fill 2500 Christmas bags with a pair of new socks.
Angelo, 8 years old, saved his allowance all year. He came in a few days before Christmas with a family member and $100 in cash. That’s the food for about 227 meals. One-tenth of all the meals we served at St. Anthony’s on Christmas day. Saving it must have required a certain amount of attention, not to mention self-discipline.
Kids are much the same as other people; they come in all mind sets and temperaments. At St. Anthony’s, we’re lucky. We get to meet the Amy’s, Anthony’s, and Angelo’s. From what we’ve seen, the season looks bright and the future very hopeful. Happy New Year.
It was a typical St. Anthony surprise. Deborah drove up to the Curbside Donation Drive in a van and asked if we could use some hand knitted shawls. She had never heard of our knitting drive to have 2500 scarves knitted by hand to give to our guests in the Dining Room Christmas day. Deborah knits shawls and had knitted some that she wanted to give to us, if we had any guests who could use them. I took a quick look, thanked her profusely, and sent her home with a stack of cards about the knitting project for her friends.
Later, we looked at the contents in earnest. A knitter who was helping us sort said, “There’s knitting and there’s art. This is art.” No jealousy, no competition, just heartfelt admiration. We spread them over cubicle walls and decorated the volunteer office with them for days until it was time to pack them up for our guests. It wasn’t the first time someone met a need at St. Anthony’s without knowing it was a need. Actually, it’s typical of life in this organization. But it was one of the more enchanting experiences of a fairly enchanting holiday season.
| We received so many wonderful gifts on Christmas – thousands of beautiful hand knit scarves from all over the United States for us to give to our Dining Room guests today, the smiles of appreciation from our guests over the hot meal of ham, mashed potatoes, vegetables and dessert, the service of so many hard working, dedicated volunteers.
Those same volunteers have set up a challenge grant to help put more meals on the table. We have 6 days left to meet their match of $50,000 or 20,000 meals in St. Anthony Dining Room. Today, we’re a third of the way there. You may not be able to serve a guest their Holiday meal as a volunteer, but your gift is another way to put meals on the table. |
| One of our youngest and biggest clothing donors of the season came through to our 23rd Annual Curbside Donation Drive this afternoon with a moving truck filled with 500 coats.
Amy, a 10 year-old girl from Redwood City, asked her school to participate in a drive for the homeless in San Francisco. When administrators of the school told her they we’re too busy to help Amy took it upon herself to put cardboard bins in CVS stores throughout the Bay Area with handwritten notes to customers asking to donate. With her family’s help Amy collected all the donations and brought them to St. Anthony’s. Thanks, Amy! We’re so grateful for your service that will keep 500 of our poor and homeless neighbors warm this winter! |
We’re clearing space to receive another 500 pairs of new shoes from Chrome later today. Our homeless veteran guests really appreciated the ones they gave us to give away on Veterans Day. It’s great to have even more to give away to the rest of our guests. Thanks!
Compassion and goodwill abound here at St. Anthony’s this week as thousands of hand crafted scarves have been received. And now Pricewaterhousecoopers and Macy’s have been busy volunteer elves helping us wrap, write handmade cards, and organize all our scarves for giving out on Christmas Day. Wow! We are inspired by the generosity of our community!
If you were at Renegade Craft Fair this weekend, you surely got some of your coolest Christmas shopping taken care of. And you may have seen or contributed to Renegade attendee’s scarf collection for St. Anthony’s- beautiful greens and browns, soft whites and warm reds- lovingly knitted and packaged and ready to be distributed on Christmas to guests at St. Anthony’s. Thank you Renegade! Thank you Knitters!
