Karen Mills says her life has done a complete turn-around since discovering Family Futures, a program that helps single mothers and is run out of St. Paul’s, Prince Albert, Saskatchewan.
In the fall of 2007, Mills was pregnant and also had four children. The church’s community kitchen has a partnership with Family Futures, a non-government organization that works with mothers who are pregnant or have recently had a child and are at risk due to different socio-economic factors.
Once a month the church hosts a cooking class and provides all the ingredients for a meal. Family Futures provides the transportation and childcare. Families work together to make meals for each family to take home, and also discuss different recipes and budgeting.
Through attending the Family Futures meal nights at St. Paul’s, Mills met several ladies at the church who she describes as friendly, outgoing, understanding and supportive.
“They are a terrific bunch of people, and I’ve even tried to get some other young moms to come (and attend church),” she says.
Another outreach program at the church that Mills says helped her family is the Christmas hamper program.
“The church went out of their way to put a hamper together for me and my kids and put the spark back in their eyes,” she says, adding it was overwhelming and helped her children know that there is a God.
When Mills and her family moved to Prince Albert last year they attended a couple other churches, but she “just didn’t feel a connection.” After getting to know some of the ladies at the church, Mills decided to start attending with her family.
“I’m an aboriginal woman, so my experience throughout my life is I’ve been looked down on in society,” she says.
She says when she started going to St. Paul’s everyone would smile and wave to her and her children. The congregation’s excitement to see her and her family is motivating for Mills. “That just makes the next part of my week go by even faster and better,” she says.
“There is nobody being judgmental or looking down on one another. It’s just a good place to go,” says Mills. “I’m sure grateful for having found a parish to belong to finally and even if we would have been in dire straits and desperate need they would be willing to pull me out of it.”
Feeding the Hungry
Riverside Community School is located a couple blocks from St. Paul’s and has embraced several partnership programs with the church. The inner-city community school has many families with a lower socio-economic background.
In Saskatchewan, community schools are in areas where there is high need and the school has extra financial resources to meet some of these needs.
“The kids in that school have some real needs, and because that school is a community school and there are some open-minded progressive-thinking people there we are able to have this effective partnership so that the students win,” says Sandy Scott, St. Paul’s minister.
Riverside has a community room, a community development worker and a social worker. Within the community room, which has resources accessible to all families in the area regardless of which school the children attend, there are several volunteer and community-based programs.
Jane Krafchuk is the school’s social worker and is also a member of St. Paul’s. She says the partnership between the church and school started about 15 years ago at a much smaller scale. St. Paul’s would provide a box of apples to the school every month, and a couple women from the congregation would help make lunches at the school.
A couple years ago St. Paul’s embarked on a major study and completed a community-based survey. Members of the mission and outreach committee looked for how the church could nurture and grow in their relationship with Riverside, and out of that came an emergency hamper program.
“We looked to find other ways how we would support and empower the families at Riverside and more often than not these occasions of hunger are towards the end of the month when people’s money has run out,” says Krafchuk.
Hampers were distributed when Krafchuk or a teacher would identify a child or family that was struggling to make ends meet. The church would be notified and to provide enough food for the family.
Another option for families was the use of a co-op charge number with a set amount for them to shop with.
“We really are trying to empower them,” says Krafchuk. It is important the families feel valued and loved, as a member of the community, she adds.
Each month St. Paul’s ensures there are two full food hampers available at the school. When a hamper goes to a family, the church is called and will provide another one.
At Christmastime hampers are delivered to approximately 60 families chosen by the school system. The hampers are supported by St. Paul’s along with inmates of the Prince Albert Correctional Centre, Pine Grove Correctional Centre and Riverside Community School Association.
The church decided to start a Soup Pot outreach program to help schools keep children attending through providing meals to hungry children. Committee members meet once a month and prepare, cook and deliver homemade soup, chili and meat pies. Members of the congregation provide the nutritious ingredients.
Each month approximately 80 pails of soup are made. The food is delivered to Riverside Community School and Prince Charles Community School, and serves an area with approximately 1,200 families who have children at the east flat public schools.
“The program has started really small but then it has grown, and grown, and grown, and consequently so has the congregation at St. Paul’s grown because the mission and outreach is really valid, it gives people a clear sense of their Christian mission,” says Krafchuk.
The Biblical basis of Jesus feeding the multitude is the outreach program’s theme, she says.
“People are really involved in it and it never ceases to amaze me,” she says. Krafchuk says though she sometimes worries how they will be enough meat for the next month’s soup, but it is always provided. “It’s just amazing.”
John Schultz, Riverside’s principal, says new people often come to the community room and pick up soup. The freezers at Riverside Community School are filled with frozen, individual containers that are available in the community room for anyone to pick up as well as for identified families. The school provides bread and buns.
An example of how successful the soup program is comes from the kindergarten class, one of 25 classrooms. Once a week, usually on a Friday, the kindergarten teacher will go to the community room and bring back soup to the classroom as the students wait for their parents to pick them up at the end of the day.
“Every week, of all this year, there has never been one (container of soup) left,” says Schultz.
Another program the church runs for the school is called the winter warm-up program, spearheaded by congregation member Diane Maier.
Maier, a self-professed shopaholic, says she loves getting bargains and started shopping for children who needed coats, boots and mitts. The program evolved from winter attire to clothes in general.
The clothes may be for specific children in need at Riverside or go to the school’s community room for families to take what they need.
“I’ve had the privilege of being around when some of the kids have come in and tried things on, it just does your heart good, these kids are so excited about getting a new coat,” says Maier. “It’s a great program, it really helps out these kids.”
Run For Riverside
St. Paul’s started to send children from Riverview to Camp Christopher, the synod church camp, through Run for Riverside.
Scott and his wife, Elizabeth, run marathons and donate the funds raised to Run for Riverside. The couple has run twice in the Saskatoon marathon (2006, 2008) and once in Red Deer (2007).
The congregation is behind the effort and donates a majority of the money. There is also support from members of the community.
In 2007, more than $7,000 was raised and 61 children were sent to camp.
During the summer of 2008 Westview Community School asked the church to partner with them in a similar way as Riverside. Westview had successfully hired a summer camp co-ordinator.
St. Paul’s received funds from the Presbyterian Church in Canada’s Healing and Reconciliation Fund to help sponsor 34 Westview children. The fund provided a grant to help aboriginal children have the opportunity to attend the camp, which is located on traditional First Nations territory.
The 2008 Run to Send Kids to Camp campaign was a success, with $12,000 raised and more than 80 children from the two schools sent to camp through the program.
“We are very excited about being able to partner with two public schools, whose students are over 80 per cent aboriginal to provide the children, and the children from our congregation, with the opportunity to grow in faith and find ways to live and work together that will only bear the fruit of peace and abundance for our community,” says Scott.
Scott says the northern Saskatchewan community has people who are willing to think outside the box, which fosters a welcoming environment for a partnership between a church and public schools.
“It’s a win-win-win situation,” says Scott.
The camp benefits from a diverse population, as many aboriginal children are sponsored through the partnership.
“The grant means that there will be racial diversity in the camp and that aboriginal spirituality will be integrated in a just and holistic way into the camp experience,” says Scott. “This will help to teach all campers that embodiment of the Good News and the Spirit of Christ is about living the promise of forgiveness and reconciliation, not imposing the Gospel on other people without considering the gifts they have to share with us.”
The children and families win because they have the experience of going to camp, and the caregivers have a break.
Schultz says there are summer camp stories all over the school, especially in September when the children come back to school and talk about how much fun they had. School staff members have helped with donations and driving the vans. He says the drivers have noted that on the way to camp the children seem reserved and not sure what to expect.
“(The kids) on the way back are really exuberant, just sharing their camp stories and you can tell it will make a lasting impact, it’s wonderful that way,” he says.
Partnering to Make a Difference
The many outreach programs the church is involved in through the local schools is a witness for the children, says Scott.
“This is frontline evangelism,” he says.
“The kids get to go to camp and they certainly get to hear the story and live the life of faith at camp, and then at school they get to see people from our church embodying the ministry of Christ among them, whether it’s through the food program or the winter warm-up program or just us helping out when they ask us to. It’s been an exciting program.”
One young woman has shared that the opportunity to attend camp as a child changed her life.
“We are laying the seeds for the future,” says Scott.
Scott says the congregation is seeing more newcomers come through the doors.
“When people who are searching see something positive or see the gospel, they respond and one of their responses is coming and finding out what is going on in that church,” says Scott.
The church has been reaching out to younger families and slowly but surely the congregation is growing, notes Scott. The church had no church school program and now has one that involves approximately 25 children and youth.
“We live in a pluralistic age and the church needs to come to terms with that; we can’t evangelize in imperialistic ways but we can evangelize by embodying the gospel, living the gospel, and then when we are asked we can declare the gospel,” Scott says.
The church’s work is also important as part of the healing and reconciliation with Aboriginal people to partner with one another. “We need to rebuild trust,” Scott says.
