I have worked with non-profits for almost 25 years now, but after a recent United Way effort to develop some new goals for meeting basic needs in this county, I’ve become a little enamored of the front-line emergency services agencies that I never really paid much attention (or respect) to before. These are the ones that were started by a group of people who wanted to meet a basic need – (most often food). Their service is born from heeding a call to live the gospels, to serve their neighbors in need and their sense of what’s right.
The agencies have grown, usually by adopting new services to meet new and immediate needs in their communities. While diversifying their food services, from serving hot meals to unhoused people to developing a food pantry to serve struggling housed people, they’ve expanded into areas I don’t think they ever envisioned. Our local front line multi-service agency, St. Joseph’s Family Center, has taken on family shelter and employment services in addition to emergency assistance, plus funneling United Way dollars to folks who need an emergency payment of utilities or rent.
What makes them stand out is the amount of work they do and the number of people they serve, with just a few paid employees because they have a legion of volunteers – not just one-hit wonders – who put in the equivalent of 20 to 40 hours a week.
St. Joseph’s is special for a lot of reasons, the most extraordinary, I think, is it steps up to the plate to take on extra work when there’s a need in the community. Since it was started by Marge Albaugh, who Executive Director of the Emergency Housing Consortium Barry Del Buono called “the godmother of Gilroy’s homeless people,” St. Joseph’s has expanded to serve Gilroy and San Martin because the need is there. The most recent community benefit is the grocery shuttle service for seniors discontinued by Raley’s Supermarket.
This is not the first time St. Joseph’s has picked up the slack when other groups have folded up their tents and left Gilroy. When EHC dropped the Family Winter Shelter Program at the Ochoa Migrant Center, I worked at EHC at the time. And, though I cannot fault them at all for making such a move, Marge Albaugh said “those families must be housed in the winter,” and made arrangements to take it on, even though providing shelter wasn’t what St. Joseph had ever done.
Other examples of added programs are the meals for seniors at Wheeler Manor, the employment services that started under Mujeres/Familias Pueden, and now, the senior shuttle. In each case, city and community leaders turned to St. Joseph. For each, the first consideration from St. Joe’s was “what does the community need us to do?” rather than “how much money will you give us for it?” Or “will this build our organization?”
It demonstrates that the management of St. Joseph’s is driven by a sincere commitment to its mission of meeting needs in South County. It has relieved the entire community from having to cope with the detritus of abandoned programs and services. Yet the programs still cost money, and there is only so much “rescuing” a grassroots organization with only eight employees can do, even with their many volunteers.
So, in my typically blunt but well-intended fashion, I am asking for the community to send St. Joseph’s its thanks and good wishes, but also its financial assistance to help with the latest shuttle project, which has added an extra $24,000 to its fundraising burden that it had not projected back when it set its 2006-07 budget (The Gilroy Foundation has admirably anted up $12,000).
St. Joseph’s is planning its annual fundraising dinner for St. Patrick’s Day and is using it to help fill the gap taking on the shuttle has created. On Saturday, March 17, St. Joseph’s will celebrate its dedicated volunteers and its appreciation of being part of such a generous community.
Tickets for a great meal are $25 each. However, a $1,000 sponsorship of each table would make up what they need. If you can’t do that, every bit helps. For more information on the dinner or St. Joseph’s, please call St. Joseph’s Director David Cox at 842-6662.
Columnist Dina Campeau is a wife, mother of two teens and a resident of Morgan Hill. Her work for the last seven years has focused on affordable housing and homeless issues in Santa Clara County. Her column will be published each Friday. Reach her at
dc******@ch*****.net
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