In November,  Soul Center teamed up with St. Jude’s Food Pantry to help provide a Thanksgiving meal for our brothers and sisters in Wilmington who might not otherwise have a feast to share. And the key element in our shopping was FRESH because rarely do food pantries provide fresh food (produce, meat, dairy/oils) because it isn’t shelf stable and feasible to store.

In October, we held a Card Party at Soul Center on our traditional Soup Sunday.  It was a great success!! Folks wrote messages in 124 cards. We’ll be sending them to friends who live in Asheville and Black Mountain to hand out to workers helping in the recovery effort from Hurricane Helene that created devastating damage to those communities.

Riding the bus is a gift for those in Wilmington who are experiencing homelessness. What a relief it is to be able to get to a hot breakfast at St Jude’s or the Day Center downtown or to a doctor or therapist appointment. This month we helped make that happen.  The Soul Center Community donated an unbelievable $620 for to purchase bus passes for this important population. Huge thanks to all who participated!!

The Cape Fear Literacy Council was looking for used books this summer. Donated books are sold online and all proceeds go to CFLC. This non-profit provides free, personalized literacy and language education so adults can transform their lives and contribute to a stronger community. They were asking for specific categories of books — history or contemporary issues, art (history and instruction), recent fiction or non-fiction bestsellers, textbooks, recent travel books, self-help books. That was all our SSC community needed to know. We collected ten very large cartons of books for this wonderful program.  Our Soul Center Community is full of book lovers. This was a great project for us.

NourishNC provides food insecure children with nutritious meals.  Many children struggle with hunger over the weekend and during school breaks when they do not have access to free or reduced school meals.  On Fridays, NourishNC delivers backpacks filled with nutritious, non-perishable foods that will go home with children that afternoon. The Backpack Program ensures that when children are not in school, they will have something nutritious to eat.

In June, SSC collected items for this Backpack Program, items like pudding cups, nutritious bars, shelf stable yogurt, etc. We had such an enthusiastic response, plus we collected an additional $235 to help NourishNC with this important project. Many thanks to all who participated.

The Northside Food Coop’s mission is to increase access to nutritious and affordable food in an area of our city that is a USDA-defined food desert. Twice a month they host a dinner, and there is always leftover food. They need help finding ways to send those leftovers home with the folks who attend.

Our June Service Project helped with that. We asked our Soul Center community to bring in clean, reusable takeout food containers which Northside’s clients can use to take food home after these dinners. It was a win for everyone – it also gave us a  way to repurpose containers we no longer needed. We are grateful to be able to help.

In April, we collected backpack supplies of personal hygiene items to help those who are experiencing homelessness, especially during Wilmington’s warm summer months. Our friends at Vigilant Hope work to support this community all year round. And we, through our donations, have become part of the family.

In March, we collected period care items for women to support the YWCA’s New Choices Economic Empowerment Program.  This program promotes women’s empowerment and economic advancement, with a particular focus on the reality of the ways race impact’s women’s opportunities. YWCA’s New Choices is designed to equip women with the knowledge, skills and resources needed to break barriers, overcome challenges and achieve financial independence.

The February Service Project – Soles4Souls – generated an unprecedented number of donations. Lead by Jackie Houtz. the team matched up shoes from hundreds of bags and boxes of shoes folks brought in. They matched them up, banded them, then filled 33 shipping boxes with 795 pairs of shoes. Extraordinary! (Shown above are just a few of the many folks who helped in this impressive effort.)

Thank you to everyone who participated, everyone who reached out to neighbors and friends. This project will create so much help, so much good in parts of the world where it is greatly needed. We are grateful.