January 24, 2009
Charities to benefit from Annual Catholic Appeal
By Denise MacLachlan
Herald staff
A student intern, left, from the child development program at California State University, Sacramento works with very young guests at Wellspring Women’s Center in Sacramento. Wellspring’s ministry of hospitality with dignity is one of more than 100 programs that will be supported by the 2009 Annual Catholic Appeal. Photo courtesy of Wellspring Women’s Center
For Yolanda Torrecillas at Wellspring Women’s Center in Sacramento, a young girl brought home the change in the economic landscape.
“I was serving at the breakfast line and a new family came up, a mother and daughter. The daughter looked about 12,” Torrecillas said. “I asked the little girl if she wanted orange juice or chocolate milk, and she looked at me, and then she burst into tears. Her mother put her hand on the girl’s shoulder and said, ‘It isn’t you. It’s her first time.’”
Torrecillas, who has a daughter herself, said “It was eye-opening for me on a personal level. It would be so stressful, especially for children, when the family is in financial trouble.”
Wellspring is currently serving a record number of guests, many of them “families who have never been without a paycheck before,” said Torrecillas, who is development director and volunteer at the charity that serves breakfast to women and children five days a week.
“People walk in who don’t know what to do or how this works. It’s obvious they’ve never been to a charity before,” she said.
And their numbers are mounting. In November 2007, Wellspring served an average of 175 people a day. In November 2008 the average was 256, Torrecillas said.
Wellspring is just one of more than 100 social service programs that will be supported by the 2009 Annual Catholic Appeal, the Diocese of Sacramento’s stewardship effort that provides crucial funding to charities throughout Northern California.
With record unemployment across the nation, reaching into the double digits in several counties in the diocese, charities across its 20 counties are straining under the combination of increased need and decreased resources.
“The Annual Catholic Appeal is a major source of funding for our youth programs,” according to Sister of Social Service Jeanne Felion, executive director of Stanford Settlement Neighborhood Center in Sacramento. “Other sources of funding are diminishing or dying up altogether.”
Sister Felion explained that just like businesses, when local and state governments struggle financially, there is less money available to charities.
“The state government is in worse shape than it’s ever been, in terms of deficits,” she said, “so it takes back funds from local government, from city and county agencies. So city and county agencies take back funding from non-mandated services, like programs for the poor, or youth, or senior citizens. Certain services are mandated by law, like police or fire departments, and they have to be funded. But that leaves less money for grants to charities.”
Father Michael Kiernan, executive director of Catholic Charities of Sacramento, notes the same dynamic.
“With people losing their houses and jobs, with businesses closing, and people’s hours cut back, there is a great likelihood that charities will be getting less funding from government sources and grants,” he said.
“It’s obvious in every way that people are hurting,” he added. “People come to us who are living in their cars, who need food, who are not able to do what they used to do, which is put bread on the table and a roof over their children’s heads. We’re helping people now who used to help us.”
Kurt Chismark, executive director of Catholic Social Service in Sacramento and Solano, told The Herald, “If it weren’t for the Annual Catholic Appeal, neither social service program would be open.”
“We get about 20 percent of our funding from the appeal, and although we are diversified in the rest of our funding sources, the public monies are certainly at risk,” he said. “Are we going to get an IOU from the state at the end of the fiscal year in May or June? Our programs are at risk.”
Catholic Social Service-Sacramento offers the clinical program, New Pathways Counseling Services, with sliding scale fees for people who can’t afford the standard $80 to $100 per hour rate for counseling.
“We help people put their lives together in their most desperate moments,” Chismark said. “People who lose their jobs come to us for counseling, to address the stress in the home, the depression and domestic violence.”
In Solano County, in addition to New Pathways Counseling Services, Catholic Social Service also runs a family assistance services program that helps the poor and marginalized with food, rent and mortgage assistance, Chismark said, as well as with employment coaching, bus passes, vouchers at thrift shops for job interview clothes, housing for homeless people with children, and housing for the disabled, among other services.
“I guess our typical client has been a single mom with three kids, working as a nurse, who is renting, doesn’t have any financial reserves, and is suddenly homeless because her landlord raised the rent or sold the house,” he said. “That’s actually a very common situation in Vallejo.”
In the diocese’s northern counties, Don Chapman is executive director of Northern Valley Catholic Social Service, which operates social service programs in five counties — Shasta, Butte, Glenn, Siskiyou and Tehama — which have some of the highest unemployment rates in the state and minimal funding for social service programs.
The Annual Catholic Appeal “provides a critical component of the funding we use for our housing programs,” Chapman said. “Right now we are in the process of creating three different programs in different counties to provide housing for the severely mentally ill, for developmentally disadvantaged adults, and for low-income seniors.”
Chapman noted that it takes about three years to put a housing program together — to find land, architects and builders, get permits, build the units. “The appeal funds provide our seed money, to pay for the preliminary work that we have to do to get the programs funded,” he said. “It’s critically important.”
In Sacramento, Father John Boll, pastor of St. Anthony Parish, has noticed a surge in the number of people asking the parish for help, many on the verge of homelessness.
“The need has increased exponentially,” he said. “People are asking us for help with PG&E bills and rent. They’re about to be evicted, or their power is shut off. We’re even getting calls from outside the (parish) area.”
Father Boll noted that 50 percent of the Annual Catholic Appeal’s proceeds go to numerous social service programs that are supported by the appeal, 25 percent goes to support formation and education expenses for diocesan seminarians and for building new parishes, and 25 percent is returned to the parishes for their own social service ministries or local community programs.
“There are predictions that another two million people could be losing their jobs,” Father Boll noted. “This economy is going to get worse before it gets better. So with more people asking for help, we need more people to give.
“Maybe people can’t afford to give much,” he added, “but if everyone pitches in and gives what they can, we can help a lot of people.”
Participation in last year’s Annual Catholic Appeal more than doubled from 8,000 donors in 2007 to 16,000 in 2008, according to Mike Halloran, director of stewardship and development for the diocese.
“We hope to see a similar increase in participation in the years to come,” he said. “We think it’s possible because we’ve already seen the great generosity of the people in this diocese in the past. When they see a need, they respond.”
In the current economic downturn, “we are trying to reach everyone we can,” said Beth White, associate director of social ministry for the diocese.
“No matter how well off we are, we have this idea now that we are all vulnerable,” she said. “People have a real recognition that it could be any one of us out of a job or out of a house.”
