Special Project … Fall 2020
We remind you that our Special Project for 2020-2021 is to support Community Missions of the Niagara Frontier in Niagara Falls, NY. Many things drew us to this project. A couple of those are:
Their Girls Circle project, which runs groups within the Niagara Falls public schools to help build girls’ self-esteem and to teach them strategies for dealing with the pressures to use drugs. This matches well with our national focus on addiction and recovery. We want to help girls avoid using drugs to deal with the many pressures they face.
Community Missions also runs a residential program for people coming out of in-patient drug rehabilitation.
A new ministry Community Missions plans is opening this month is a Youth Homeless Demonstration Project for young adults ages 18-24. For this program, they will use a site that they previously rented to another organization.
Community Missions (CM) Chaplain, ABC-USA ordained Rev. Mark Breeze, reports that the number of people accessing (CM) food pantry and meal services has skyrocketed during the pandemic.
This graphic reflects a 3-fold increase in people served in the 1st 6 weeks of the pandemic compared to the same period last year.
Chaplain Breeze also reports that a new NYS regulation taking effect in 2022 will not allow families and individuals to be housed in the same location by organizations like CM providing housing services. Therefore, CM is looking to purchase property to build housing for families and could really use any help they can get.
As you see, our Special Mission Project is especially important. Let’s do what we can to get our local churches involved in giving to support this ministry. See www.communitymissions.org.
Chaplain Breeze is available to lead us in a workshop in the April Conference.
Submitted by, Debbie Kelsey
