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St. Paul's In The News!
An article about the Sanctuary Movement featured St. Paul’s and Paula Hawthorn, and written by Cara MacDonald Meredith, in The Living Church.
An article about the Sanctuary Movement featured St. Paul’s and Paula Hawthorn, and written by Cara MacDonald Meredith, in The Living Church.
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Report to the Annual Meeting
February 2, 2025
Community Outreach and Social Justice
Guns to Gardens– submitted by Matthew Schooler
The Social Justice Committee is committed to working the betterment of our society by following the example of Jesus and remembering the commandment to “love out neighbors as ourselves.” We have continued to help those who are living in food insecurity with the work of the Pantry of Hope. Our work on the ongoing needs of our outside community continues with our back-to-school supply drive for St. Paul’s School, Madison Academy, Primera Iglesia, and Westlake Middle School and through our Giving Tree for the families of UCSF Benioff Center for the Vulnerable Child. We remain resolved to stand against violence in our surrounding community by continuing with our annual Guns to Gardens gun buyback with the help of the Oakland PD. We have taken a stand for Peace and Love to counter the rising Christian Nationalist Movement. We have recently formed a Rapid Response Team to help those immigrants who being prosecuted and deported. Thank you to Archdeacon Bolton, Paula Hawthorn Pam Buckingham and Jeanette Dinwiddie-Moore.
The work of St Paul’s family remains forever dedicated to work with the Love of Christ in our hearts and seeking justice for all. This is a place of hope and inspiration. We ask you to continue to help us.
The Social Justice Committee is committed to working the betterment of our society by following the example of Jesus and remembering the commandment to “love out neighbors as ourselves.” We have continued to help those who are living in food insecurity with the work of the Pantry of Hope. Our work on the ongoing needs of our outside community continues with our back-to-school supply drive for St. Paul’s School, Madison Academy, Primera Iglesia, and Westlake Middle School and through our Giving Tree for the families of UCSF Benioff Center for the Vulnerable Child. We remain resolved to stand against violence in our surrounding community by continuing with our annual Guns to Gardens gun buyback with the help of the Oakland PD. We have taken a stand for Peace and Love to counter the rising Christian Nationalist Movement. We have recently formed a Rapid Response Team to help those immigrants who being prosecuted and deported. Thank you to Archdeacon Bolton, Paula Hawthorn Pam Buckingham and Jeanette Dinwiddie-Moore.
The work of St Paul’s family remains forever dedicated to work with the Love of Christ in our hearts and seeking justice for all. This is a place of hope and inspiration. We ask you to continue to help us.
Report to the Annual Meeting
February 2, 2025
Caring for Vulnerable Children and their Families
– submitted by Paula Hawthorn
Again this Christmas the Giving Tree was a wonderful success. When the social worker at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Center for the Vulnerable Child reached out to us to ask if we could again participate in their Family-to-Faily program, we said YES, because they have such an amazing program.
This is from their website:
The Center for the Vulnerable Child (CVC) provides individual and family therapy, clinical and medical case management, developmental screening, and parental education to the most vulnerable children in our community. Children experiencing poverty, family disruption, homelessness, foster care placement, drug exposure, abuse, neglect, community violence, or other threats may be at risk for health, emotional, developmental, or social problems. The CVC works to promote resilience, health and well-being for the children we serve through a breadth of programs, highly individualized services and a dedication to our patients that reflects UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland long mission to care for all children.
The CVC Family-to-Family program matches the families of at-risk children with those who would like to make sure they have Christmas presents. This year we were matched with 4 families, as we were last year. However, this year the families mostly just had one child, so that we had only 39 tags to put on the giving tree. In 2023 we had 51 tags, so we had fewer this year, and our congregation noticed because the tags were gone by the time some went to look for a tag. (Clearly next year we need to ask for a certain number of people rather than a number of families) The wonderful, generous St. Paul’s congregation brought the gifts to church, and they were gathered up & delivered to the CVC, who were delighted!
And it was all possible with your help!
Again this Christmas the Giving Tree was a wonderful success. When the social worker at the UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland Center for the Vulnerable Child reached out to us to ask if we could again participate in their Family-to-Faily program, we said YES, because they have such an amazing program.
This is from their website:
The Center for the Vulnerable Child (CVC) provides individual and family therapy, clinical and medical case management, developmental screening, and parental education to the most vulnerable children in our community. Children experiencing poverty, family disruption, homelessness, foster care placement, drug exposure, abuse, neglect, community violence, or other threats may be at risk for health, emotional, developmental, or social problems. The CVC works to promote resilience, health and well-being for the children we serve through a breadth of programs, highly individualized services and a dedication to our patients that reflects UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland long mission to care for all children.
The CVC Family-to-Family program matches the families of at-risk children with those who would like to make sure they have Christmas presents. This year we were matched with 4 families, as we were last year. However, this year the families mostly just had one child, so that we had only 39 tags to put on the giving tree. In 2023 we had 51 tags, so we had fewer this year, and our congregation noticed because the tags were gone by the time some went to look for a tag. (Clearly next year we need to ask for a certain number of people rather than a number of families) The wonderful, generous St. Paul’s congregation brought the gifts to church, and they were gathered up & delivered to the CVC, who were delighted!
And it was all possible with your help!
Standing Against ViolenceGuns to GardensGuns to GardensWe work towards peace in our streets by participating in Night Walks sponsored by Faith in Action East Bay, in which a group walks through the streets of an impacted Oakland neighborhood to let them know we are not alone.
Every second Saturday we join the members of True Vine Church for a Stand In, where we stand from 11am until noon at a corner in West Oakland near where someone has been killed and loudly, with bull horns & chants, call on people to put the guns down, and let the community know that this cannot be just another blip on the nightly news, that this person was important and their death is not acceptable. We are the principal supporters of Guns to Gardens, an initiative that helps to beat swords into plowshares by collecting guns at one-time events in exchange for gift certificates and a hand-forged garden tool fashioned from the weapons retrieved at the previous year’s buyback. Helping to Create Pathways Out of PovertyWe support the Episcopal Impact Fund, which funds community-based poverty relief efforts, focusing on housing security for families as a cornerstone in breaking the cycle of intergenerational poverty in the Bay Area.
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