The Helping Hand Committee, part of the Witnessing Ministry of First Presbyterian Church, coordinates the collection of food, household necessities, and cash from members once each month (except December) in support of four front-line institutions that assist poor, homeless, and troubled persons in the area. We deliver the items so collected in regular rotation to:

1. Meeting Ground, a Presbyterian program, provides food, housing, assistance, and counseling on both a temporary and long-term basis to individuals and families at three locations in or near Elkton, MD. Their clients include run-away young people, battered women and children, people fighting addictions, and those whom illness or loss of employment have driven into homelessness.

2. Emmaus House (Homeward Bound), just east of the University of Delaware campus in Newark, provides limited-time shelter, food, and counseling to the same kinds of clients. Like Meeting Ground, Emmaus House provides communal meals and tries to develop a sense of community that will allow its people to reorient themselves in society at large.

3. Newark Area Welfare, which began with the personal charitable gifts of concerned citizens in the 1930s, provides temporary help to those out of work or in immediate need that cannot be met swiftly by governmental agencies. We help stock their Food Closet, located at the First United Methodist Church on East Main Street in Newark.

4. The Food Closet at Kingswood United Methodist Church on Marrows Road, near Route 4 is–like the Hope Dining Room, which is located in the same church—a volunteer service carried out by members of the Kingswood and other churches to provide temporary aid by distributing groceries and household supplies to those awaiting unemployment insurance, welfare department aid, or food stamps, and those for whom the governmental assistance is inadequate.