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.

Among those who worked on HH in 2005 were Charles Eastman, Bill and Phyllis Sisk, Steve Hardwick, Tip Kindel, Matt Reyne, Fulton and Shirley Kitson, Carol Aftosmis, Phil and DeeJaye McGinnis, and–above all–members of sixty or more households of the FPC family who came bearing gifts at least once during the past months.

FPC collected and donated to these four organizations $1,170 in cash or checks and 342 bags of groceries in 2005. Estimating the average value at $11.00, the total response during 2005 was slightly less than $5,000. But that total compares with $1,465 in cash or checks and 421 bags of groceries, with an estimated value $5,052, or a total of $6,517 in 2004, and with an estimated value of $4,900 for groceries and $1,445 in cash, totaling $6,345 during 2003. Statistics provided by the volunteers and staff in two of the front-line groups indicate that the needs of the poor and troubled people who come to them have risen by 40% to 60% during the past two years. Our reduced contributions this past year must, therefore, have impacted the lives of some of their clients. Though, as I said in last year’s report, our most important contribution is to help keep up the spirits of the dedicated volunteers and staffs of the four groups, a primary reward for those at FPC who participate in the program. But we must try in 2006 to do better on the practical side.