Category: Outreach

There are students in our neighborhood schools whose day starts before sunrise, riding a bus 45 minutes to Leesville Elementary. When school is out, it’s another 45 minute ride home. These children live in the Washington Terrace Community, in southeast Raleigh. Washington Terrace provides a lower cost housing opportunity for indigent families, predominately African American. There are many single moms, aunts and grandparents raising the kids, as many do not have reliable fathers, or father-figures, in their life. Our Pride Packs program supports many of these households with healthy food and beverages.

Each day, many of these children go home to an empty apartment, as the adult(s) are still at work. It’s very likely homework is not foremost on their minds. Opportunities for mischief, or worse, abound in this scenario. This is where Nativity can make a difference! An amazing program called Homework Haven has quietly been providing tutors and mentors to this community several years. After school, Haven kids go straight to the community center, where they are greeted by volunteers with snacks. Once settled, we work together on homework or reading assignments. Due to home conditions, this is often the only true homework experience most of these kids may know. I said ‘we’ because I volunteered with the Haven for several years until the pandemic struck. Of all the volunteer opportunities I have done, this was the most rewarding. You witness a child’s ability to learn, and their confidence, grow right before you.

There are many ways you can help. The Haven wants to provide each child all the school supplies Leesville asks each student to furnish. The list is lengthy but includes the following items:

Book Bags (no wheels)
Packs of Sticky notes                                           
Child size headphones (no earbuds, not Bluetooth)
Dry erase markers
Boxes of crayons (24 count)                                     
Washable markers
Glue Sticks                                                                 
Yellow highlighter markers
Pencil boxes                                                           
Pink Erasers  
#2 pencils (Ticonderoga, no mechanical pencils)     
Cap erasers
Pencil sharpeners                                                     
Rounded edge scissors
Marbled Composition notebooks                             
Donations for 10 Scholastic News subscriptions at $8/subscription            Wide rule spiral notebooks (any color)                           
Boxes of quart and gallon size Ziplock bags         
1, 2 and 3-inch binders
Plastic folders with clasps                                     
Colored Pencils (blue, green, yellow, orange, purple)
Pocket folders                                                       
Facial Tissues
Packages of Baby Wipes                                       
Page Protectors
Notebook paper
Reusable Water bottles

Consider donating money for their snacks – most of the kids have not eaten since before noon, and dinner may be an hour (or longer) away. I hope you are inspired to help. There is a donations link on the
website, and boxes are in the Narthex and the Estill House foyer for school supply donations. Thank you for your kindness and willingness to help; your generosity is helping create a brighter (literally & figuratively) future for all.

Matt Chytka

The Mojadady family, mom, dad, and two boys, 5 and 8 will be moving into a clean, comfortably furnished apartment with a well-stocked pantry and a hot meal awaiting them any time now. 

I cannot thank you all enough for your support of this project that Outreach took on last year. Your donations of household items, cleaning supplies, toiletries, money, time, and the love behind it have made it all possible. 

Below is a summary of our day yesterday, submitted by Ailsa Tessier. We have also included pictures from Mari Borstelmann.

Hooray for our team!! A masterful effort was made today to get the apartment ready for our Afghan family. What would the day have been without a bit of drama?! It needed MAJOR cleaning to start with – good thing the furniture wasn’t there at 9 am. But oh wait, there’s no water. Reported it to headquarters, and onward we cleaned. Sounds of scrubbing and vacuuming and the smell of Clorox filled the air, and things began to sparkle. Dave Waechter and Dave Kerr came to the rescue for safety measures for the screen-less windows; smoke detector batteries checked; aircon filter checked. Still no furniture. Cleaning, cleaning, items sorted. Jersey Mike’s sandwiches and chips for lunch welcomed. Still no furniture, no water.

   12:30 – Green Chair arrives with the furniture! Two guys, a truck, boxes of beds, assorted stuff – and things began to take shape. The sofa was a very exciting part of the day – it would not go around the corners of the stairs. After much engineering discussion, eventually it was hoisted up over the third floor railing with Dave Kerr and Ailsa assisting – finally made it in. Yikes – kitchen crew soon find water gushing out from under the sink onto the floor…friendly plumber Allison Martin dives under the sink, turns the shut-off valves, stanching the flood. Dave steps in to help Lillis mop up gallons of the stuff. Another call to HQ – property management plumber explains that the pipes are disconnected and the City turned off the water BECAUSE the pipes were disconnected – or something like that. When the water came on, well, you see what happened! So. Finally, all is now mopped up, and apartment arranging continues. In case you’re wondering, beds in boxes are very cool, and easy to move around. Finally it seems that things have taken shape, as clean as we can make it, and a list of any remaining problems recorded. and recycling and trash taken out.

  As it turns out, the family MAY not be able to move in on Thursday, as they cannot legally move into a place without water. So we will wait to hear an update on when it’s fixed, and when they can move in. Pam Blackwood is working on the first night’s dinner, and it may have to be put in the freezer, depending on when the family can move in.

There will be pictures on Facebook soon. This was a heroic effort on everyone’s part – and that’s what we do at Nativity when someone is in need. Thanks to all for your cheerful and willing spirits!

Dave McKinnon

A couple of years ago, Nativity’s Outreach team started  allocating a part of its annual budget to support disasters such as hurricanes, floods and wildfires.  We made donations to the Episcopal Relief & Development (ERD) organization to ensure our donations were directed properly.  We now have a non-climate related disaster occurring in Ukraine, caused by Vladmir Putin.  This is a humanitarian disaster on a massive scale. The Outreach team has made a donation to ERD to be directed to support the displaced Ukrainian people.

ERD provides updates and here is an excerpt from an email received this week:

“We are supporting Action by Churches Together (ACT Alliance) as it works through ACT member Hungarian Interchurch Aid (HIA) and other local organizations to provide emergency assistance such as food, shelter, water and basic supplies to refugees and people displaced within Ukraine.

ACT Alliance is setting up similar support points at other border towns to assist people as they leave Ukraine. It is working through local partners to provide aid for refugees in Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Poland.”

The number of displaced people is increasing rapidly with no end in sight.  Peoples’ homes have been totally destroyed so they will have nothing to come back to. If you are able, please help them out by donating through Episcopal Relief and Development.  Copy the link below and help make a difference

Lillis Ward, Outreach Team

I am so excited to announce that Leesville Elementary School is gearing up to have the Pride Packs Program back in full swing this week.  They are restocking the shelves; the social worker is helping to identify children for the program, and plans are falling into place for a successful year. The PTA leader who is in charge this year said that they are heavily dependent on churches for monetary and food donations and hope we can pick up where we left off in March 2020. 55 children have already been identified as food insecure. Through your pledges and donations, the church Outreach Team was able to make a sizable monetary donation to help get the year started. 

So, Church of the Nativity, get ready! There will be a collection box in the Narthex of the church the 1st Sunday of each month. In addition, there will be a collection basket in Corlett Hall where donations can be dropped off at any time. Church volunteers will drop the food donations off to the school office the first week of the month and from there, school volunteers will assemble the backpacks for the students. Each backpack will contain 2 breakfasts 2 lunches, 2 suppers, and snacks to give the students enough food for the weekend. Foods purchased need to be individual food serving containers (no large boxes please). If you can find cans with pull top lids, that is helpful so children don’t have to struggle with a can opener. See the attached list for recommended items. Monetary donations need to be written to LES PTA.    

Here is a tangible way we can make a difference in the lives of our youngest learners. Please join us in the effort to curb hunger.