Newsletter
Issue 20 St. Columba/St. Denis/Blessed Kateri Conference Sept. 2003
Knowing, loving and serving God by knowing, loving and serving your neighbor.

Dear Members,

I hope everyone had a wonderful summer and vacation.  Though the commitment to our client families never waivers, I seem to rededicate myself every fall as we begin again with so many projects. Perhaps we can all rededicate ourselves. On Saturday, September 27, the feast day of St. Vincent de Paul, we will have the 8 AM mass at St. Columba Church in honor of all our members, living and deceased. We are planning a light breakfast immediately following the mass in the St. Denis/St. Columba School art room. Please mark your calendar.

To bring you up-to-date on recent happenings:

On July 10th, Shoprite-Fishkill held a special event for the Tide Racing Car driven by Ricky Craven. The store manager, Dominic Ausanio, offered the Society all the proceeds from the outdoor snack bar if we participated. Joanne Bunnell, Emily Berberich and I collected the money, gave out hot dogs and soda and in general tried to be useful.
The store staff was great and the head cashier, Dawn, did all the cooking. It was a very hot day and they all worked very hard. So many people came over just to give a donation once they saw our poster stating where the money was going. At the end, Dominic handed us a check for $389.50.

We have received notification from the Hunger Prevention and Nutrition Assistance Program (HPNAP) that our '03-'04 grant will be $4100. This is a decrease of $1300. The decrease occurred because there are more agencies applying but the NYS budget has allocated less funds for the program. Please remember to fill in the log every time you visit the food closet since this is a critical figure for the grant. We also
applied for the Operations Supplement Program (OSP) but the awards have not come out yet.


Through the efforts of Mary Murray, we received a Community Service award of $1000 from IBM. This will pay for the new storage cabinet outside the food closet. The cabinet will be purchased as soon as the school supplies have been distributed.

Our regular meeting will be September 10th at 7 PM in St. Denis/St. Columba School library. We will be discussing our projects for the coming year and we need everyone's input. Jim Falanga will report on the refrigerator magnet project. I hope to see you then.

Sincerely,
Carole Grafer, President

Minutes of June 11, 2003 meeting.

St. Vincent de Paul Society

The meeting came to order at 7:10 PM. A reading from John, Chapter 15 was read. Minutes were read and accepted.

In attendance were Bill and Carole Grafer, Jack Kiely, Jim Falanga, Pete Murray, Mary Dietz, Linda Hunt, Nick Dono, Chuck and Joanne Bunnell and myself.

This will be our last meeting until the fall. To start off with, we served a total of 45 families in the month of May. Eighty one adults, nine seniors and eighty eight children were given food. We are still in good shape in the food pantry.

We have had no luck locating a used steel cabinet and all of us voted to go ahead and make a purchase of a new one.





Shoprite in Fishkill donated a good amount of surplus food. They made arrangement to meet Linda Hunt at the food pantry. Shoprite has promised to continue helping us.

Next we discussed the magnets to be given out at the three churches. Jim Falanga has volunteered to get the ball rolling on this issue. His first idea is to call local businesses to see if they will pay for the printing. The business's name will be included. Secondly, Jim will check other sources for the pricing. We are looking to print 5000. Our goal is to remind parishioners to bring a non-perishable item weekly.
Jim will also look into the cost of mailing the magnets to parishioners. Pete and Mary Murray and myself volunteered to be on his committee and to do some calling.

Nick suggested a calendar in addition or in place of the magnets. Another idea brought up was key chains. The committee will consider all suggestions. Carole set a deadline date for completion of this project for August.

The application for HPNAP and OSP have been filed. Carole would like to thank Frank the delivery man for the donation of bread. The food pantry is always in need of sliced bread.

Looking ahead, September 10 is our next meeting. In early August, all three church bulletins will ask for donations of school supplies. The drop-off date will be August 20th. The school items will be set up outside the food pantry's hallway.

September 13th is East Fishkill's Community Day and Marge Schifini will put a stack of our brochures out for the public.

The meeting came to an end at 8:10 PM. We said a prayer and then refreshments were had by all. Enjoy the summer months.

Submitted by Emily Berberich.

SVDP Meeting Schedule

September 10, 2003
October 8, 2003
November 12, 2003
December 10, 2003

7 PM in St. Denis/St. Columba School library.

 LINDA"S CORNER

Once again it is back-to-school time. Please have your clients with children take whatever school supplies they need. The supplies are on two tables in the hallway of the food closet.

On September 27th, Carole, Nancy and I will meet to update our client list. There will be a follow-up meeting to determine each family's current status. I need to hear from each SVDP representative with the family's status and number of children, gender, age and sizes. This information is crucial for the holiday basket program. Please contact me as soon as possible. Families will be removed from the active basket
list if I do not hear from you.

Hope you all had a wonderful summer.

Linda Hunt