Christmas Curbside Donation Drive Starts Next Weekend:

Saturday, December 17th – Saturday, December 24th!

St. Anthony’s 24^th Annual Christmas Curbside Donation Drive begins on Saturday, December 17^th. St. Anthony Foundation staff and volunteers, wearing easily identifiable red jackets, will take delivery of food, clothing, and monetary donations at curbside, so donors won’t even have to leave their cars! Donated items are distributed free of charge to San Francisco’s most needy residents.

Your donation of NEW SOCKS, clean and ready-to-wear clothing, canned and dried foods are all much needed and appreciated! And if you’ve been working on hand knit scarves as holiday gifts to our guests, bring them in!

WHEN: December 17th-24th, 2011 – Weekends from 9-3 & Weekdays from 8-6

WHERE: St. Anthony Foundation - 105 Golden Gate @ Jones

NEEDED ITEMS:

Clothing
We need all kinds of clothing for men, women, and children – our most critical needs are for the following items:

Socks, Shoes
Underwear
Winter coats
Jackets
Hats

Monetary Donations

St. Anthony’s is happy to accept cash or checks for donation during Curbside and is prepared to issue receipts onsite for tax purposes.

ITEMS WE CANNOT ACCEPT:

Empty clothes hangers
Knick knacks
Used toys
Children’s car seats
Furniture
Medical equipment
Dirty, stained or torn items
Books and magazines
Exercise/sports equipment
Housewares
Computers, electronics

If you have any questions about donations, please call us at (415) 241-2600.

And in case you’d like to volunteer and join us for the holidays, call the St. Anthony Holiday Line at 415-592-2829. We look forward to seeing you!

Turkey Bowl

Two days prior to Thanksgiving, pro bowlers, sports celebrities and the community gathered together at Serra Bowl in Daly City to volunteer their time and skills as they bowled strikes for turkeys at the eleventh annual Turkey Bowl. This event raises money to buy turkeys to benefit the St. Anthony Dining Room as well as the North Peninsula Food Pantry & Dining Center of Daly City. Rex Golobic and his family – the owners of Serra Bowl – created this event to help feed the hungry over the holidays.  It has been successful since its very beginning and over 1,000 turkeys are contributed every year to help those in need.

Nancy Pelosi visits the Dining Room

On the day before Thanksgiving, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and her grandchildren graciously volunteered in our Dining Room. She has been donating her time to St. Anthony’s for many years and we are very thankful for her support. After serving, Pelosi reflected that “On Thanksgiving, we come together with family and friends to honor a spirit of gratitude: offering thanks for the blessings in our lives; giving back to the less fortunate in our communities.” Congresswoman Pelosi and her family captured the spirit of giving that we at St. Anthony’s cherish so much.

Turkey Carve

Later that day, recently re-elected Mayor Edwin Lee, Police Chief Greg Suhr, and Fire Chief Joanne Hayes-White joined St. Anthony Chefs to put the final touches on our 61^st Thanksgiving Day meal.  The Mayor, Chiefs, and uniformed members of the San Francisco Police and Fire Departments carved the last of 4,800 pounds of turkey and added the final garnish of whipped cream to our 4,000 pumpkin pies.

Thanksgiving Day

On Thanksgiving Day and all other days, St. Anthony’s opens its doors to any and all San Franciscans.  Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, joined over a hundred volunteers and thousands of guests to serve and enjoy a delicious meal prepared for 4,000.  As St. Anthony’s prepares to serve a growing number of needy residents, Executive Director Shari Roeseler commented, “These are difficult times.  At St. Anthony’s we see increasing numbers of people seeking services from all of our programs. The dining room alone saw a 15% jump in the number of guests in October.  Despite the challenges people of San Francisco are facing, I also see hope on a daily basis as donors, volunteers, and guests come together to celebrate the holiday season.” The Dining Room was full of hope and holiday cheer on Thanksgiving Day, as guests ate all the food off their plates, had second helpings of pumpkin pie, took more food home for leftovers, and walked out of St. Anthony’s with full stomachs and smiling faces.

With 4,800 pounds of turkey, 1,250 pounds of mashed potatoes, 1,250 pounds of yams, 1,000 pounds of stuffing, 4,000 individual pumpkin pies and more, this may have been one of the biggest thanksgiving meals you’ve ever seen!

St. Anthony’s 24th Curbside Holiday Donation Drive kicks off on Saturday, November 19th. St. Anthony Foundation staff and volunteers, wearing easily identifiable red jackets, will take delivery of food, clothing, and monetary donations at curbside, so donors won’t even have to leave their cars! Donated items are distributed free of charge to San Francisco’s most needy residents.

Your donation of turkeys, clean and gently worn clothing, canned and dried foods are all much needed and appreciated!

WHEN:
November 19th-24th AND December 17th-24th

• Weekdays from 8-6
• Weekends from 9-3

WHERE:
St. Anthony Foundation
105 Golden Gate @ Jones

NEEDED ITEMS:

Clothing
We need all kinds of clothing for men, women, and children – our most critical needs are for the following items:

Socks, Shoes
Underwear
Winter coats
Jackets
Hats

Monetary Donations
St. Anthony’s is happy to accept cash or checks for donation during Curbside and is prepared to issue receipts onsite for tax purposes.

Other
We also need these items:

Shopping bags – with handles
Blankets, comforters, sleeping bags
Luggage, bags, backpacks
Toiletries – new only, please
Towels, washcloths
Stuffed animals – good condition only
Children’s toys – new only, please
Strollers – in good condition
Canes – not crutches, walkers, wheelchairs

Items We Cannot Accept
Empty clothes hangers
Knick knacks
Used toys
Children’s car seats
Furniture
Medical equipment
Dirty, stained or torn items
Books and magazines
Exercise/sports equipment
Housewares
Computers, electronics

If you have any questions about donations, please call us at (415) 241-2600.

And in case you’d like to volunteer and join us for the holidays, call the St. Anthony Holiday Line at 415-592-2829. We look forward to seeing you this holiday season!

St. Anthony Foundation’s Volunteer Program was featured in this month’s Nonprofit Times. Read a short except below or click here to download a .pdf scan of the article.

“Nonprofits should also think about developing an orientation program to connect with volunteers. Angelina Cahalan, volunteer manager for St. Anthony’s, explained the orientation allows for a piece of education for volunteers, including St. Anthony’s history, how the organization does its work and the community it serves. “We want them to understand the deeper realities for the people who live in this community. What is going to be like working with these folks? We invite them to be a part of the mission. What we do is really important to us and, more importantly, how we do everything we do with dignity and respect,” said Cahalan.

“Life’s most persistent questions is: What are you doing for others?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Craigslist Foundation Deputy Director Susan Nesbitt will be volunteering at St. Anthony Dining Room on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. She shared here excitement on here upcoming visit today on the Craigslist Foundation Blog. Here’s an excerpt:

Service is a very important aspect to our mission here at Craigslist Foundation. Everyday, we work to connect people and organizations to the resources they need to strengthen communities and neighborhoods.

On January, 18, 2010, I plan to volunteer for the great folks in SF at St. Anthony Foundation.

And There It Went!

Each New Year we make resolutions and renew our commitments. In times of abundance we can make casual resolutions. In times of scarcity however, we look inward and resolve to take better care of those things closest to our hearts.

At St. Anthony’s we are resolving to find new ways to make services more efficient and donations stretch farther. We are streamlining operations and purchasing in bulk.

In your commitment to do more with less there are many ways to kick off the New Year:

• Let St. Anthony’s guests benefit from your spring cleaning or hold a drive and gather clothes for the Free Clothing Program.
• Signing up for a monthly giving plan is an easy way to contribute an amount that doesn’t hurt your budget.
• Volunteering gets you directly involved in the work we do, and you can fiscally support the work and programs that you have taken part in.

You can even make last minute tax-deductible gifts online until 11:59 pm December 31st.

Let’s work together and make this new year a happier one for all San Franciscans.

I received this the other day from one of our Thanksgiving volunteers:

“As a single U.C. retiree, without family, in planning how I would spend my Thanksgiving today, I had three options:

(1) I could hole up in my apartment, watch television all day, eating left-overs, and feeling very, very sorry for myself; or,

(2) I could have a 7-course dinner at inflated prices in some hotel
dining room, turned off by such an over- abundance of food with so much hunger in the Bay Area; or,

(3) I could take Bart over to San Francisco and head for St. Anthony’s Dining Room, helping serve hundreds of homeless, jobless people, who are so thankful for this generous holiday dinner served in a warm, caring and happy atmosphere, where they’re made to feel like a welcome guest.

I’ve been a volunteer at St. Anthony’s Dining Room for several years and feel richly rewarded for my slight contribution to their wonderful program.”

We give thanks for our amazing volunteers!

Volunteers in St. Anthony Dining Room play three major roles: working on the serving line, serving trays to guests and bussing tables. Most people’s favorite tasks are the first giving people food which is much more “glamorous” than cleaning up finished trays and sponging down tables. I on the other hand prefer to bus. It is a little more slow paced and allows this extrovert to chat and visit with the guests. Every once in a while we are short on volunteers and some of us staff get to get away from our desks and spend some time helping in the Dining Room. It’s always fun and many of our guests get a kick out of seeing us out of our usual role and in aprons and hair nets and have fun teasing us.

Last week I had an opportunity to serve in the Dining Room and as usual I jumped into my role as a busser. Volunteers who bus know that quite often guests at the table may ask for the uneaten bread or dessert or fruit on the tray before it is taken away. Over the years I’ve gotten into the habit of offering items to people before I put it into my collection bucket. The usual responses are “No thank you” or “I’ll take it!”. Last week I had a new response when I offered. The woman across from me looked me straight in the eye and said, “Don’t offer us garbage!” I told her that I only offer because so often people ask. She gave me her explanation, “If people ask then give it to them. But that is someone else’s leftovers, so don’t offer us garbage.” I apologized for offending her and returned to my work trying to hide my feelings of sadness and conflict.

This really made me step back and think. When we orient the volunteer groups we put a huge emphasis on dignity and respect. What does this mean, why is it so important at St. Anthony’s and why it is so important for them to act in this manner as volunteers. I felt I was being so kind and respectful in offering people more food and helping ensure that food didn’t get wasted. My offer to this woman was the complete opposite of respectful for her and she had an excellent and valid point. She made me think not just from the perspective of what is dignity and respect from a volunteer/staff perspective, but truly what does that mean from our guest’s perspective.

I’m still grappling over whether I will still offer people the extra food next time I am bussing. In my experience most people have appreciated it; but how many feel the same as this woman and don’t speak up? I am proud of this woman for speaking up for herself and thankful to her for pushing me out of my comfort zone and challenging me to think deeper about these issues that I talk to volunteers about every day.

It was Week of Caring, and Wells Fargo Trade Services was working the Clothing Program. They sorted and hung donated clothes, enough to keep the Clothing Program’s doors open the next day.

The Clothing Program can be quiet work, most of it in the room behind the store. It’s an opportunity to talk to staff and ask questions, a good gig for chatting with co-workers while getting something done. But in spite of the quiet, it’s crucial. We’ve had days with no group help and it meant closing our doors early.

The same day, Chevron Energy Solutions staffed the Dining Room. The environment at St. Anthony Dining Room is almost the opposite of the Clothing Program: fast, furious, and noisy.  The Chevron Energey Solutions group spends their days stretching energy efficiency, and it showed. They served meals and bussed trays and kept up with our demanding rate of 12 trays per minute.

“It was a great opportunity to work with an organization that has such a positive impact and influence within our SF community,” they told us. “All our volunteers had a wonderful time and said they would go back for future events.”

That’s good, because we intend to invite them back. There are several essential tasks that must be done before the holidays hit, and a whole menu of Holiday Projects that make it possible for us to celebrate with our guests.

Corporate work teams are an important part of our clever plot to win the hearts and minds of the entire city. They talk about their experience to the co-workers who couldn’t come. They come back with other teams: colleagues, church groups, families, friends. They come back on their own. They invite us to their workplace giving events and give us chance to tell yet more people why people get poor and what St. Anthony’s is doing about it. They organize co-workers to collect socks and toiletries and all those things we always run out of and always need.

We need the help. We want the friends.

If you want to organize a volunteer team at your company for a holiday project, call me at 415-592-2737 or email atrowbridge@stanthonysf.org.

“Heaven?” No. “Happenin’?” No; try again. “Heart?” Not quite; I’ll tell you—It’s the HOLIDAYS! Yes, that Season of the year from November unto the 1st day of January that is known by many as the “Holidays” is about to occur once again. The etymology of the word goes back to the 14th c. in Europe and comes from the joining of “Holy” and “Day”. What does that realm of meaning look like in the last quarter of 2009, here in San Francisco’s Tenderloin? As many of our regular volunteers know, it is a time of year when the divide between “the haves” and “the have nots” is often felt even more sharply among many of our guests and clients; or when the distance between memories of better times and nowadays can feel even greater. It’s also a time when volunteers can and do make that divide and distance a little easier to bridge, by their encouraging presence.

The Holiday Volunteer Line (415-592-2829) at St. Anthony’s begins taking calls on October 15th from individuals wishing to serve during the Season. The “marquee” days–Thanksgiving and Christmas– are swiftly booked with the needed volunteer support, but just as for the general population, the Holiday Season for our guests and clients includes the calendar weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and into the 1st week of the New Year. Thank goodness for the generosity of folks who are available and willing to help out for those days as well, when a kind and upbeat presence is at least as needed as on the “Holy-days” themselves.

I think that many of us have had the experience that any day of the year can be a holiday in the inner sense of the word. I had that experience just yesterday, when the storm soaked line of guests was pouring into the Dining Room. As I delivered a tray of steaming Hoison Chicken to one of our waiting guests, she said “Oh give it to him first; I’ve already had one tray and he hasn’t eaten yet”. This fellow wasn’t even someone who had come in with her. He had simply taken an open seat at the table. The gentleman and I both looked at her and one at another with wide eyed smiles: “Thank you!” A little bit of Heaven, Happenin’, with Heart: a Holy Day indeed. ‘Tis the Season, day in and day out. May all the Holiday Season, and the entire calendar year, be filled with days such as these!