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Community Outreach
For Community Outreach programs, our goal is to provide you, our members, with opportunities to give back to your community in ways that you believe are beneficial to society. Your ideas and suggestions are essential to that goal. If you know of a worthwhile organization in need of donations or volunteers, please forward your suggestion to outreach@sepaapa.org.
Check back at this site and keep an eye out for our next meeting notice for details on our upcoming Community Outreach projects. Below are updates on some of our recent activities.
SEPA's community outreach effort for May is the Montgomery County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, a nonprofit organization dedicated to caring for unwanted, lost and abused domestic animals.
Established in 1909 and chartered in 1916, the Montgomery County SPCA, has three locations. The Conshohocken facility houses the administrative offices as well as small domestic animals. The Perkiomenville facility includes a pet cemetery and horse farm along with facilities for small animals. Their newest facility for small domestic animals is in Abington.
The SPCA is funded solely by donations; they do not receive any government funding! With the economic downturn in the last two years their donations have dropped drastically and many more pets have been surrendered.
The SPCA needs any type of dog or cat food, pet shampoo, bleach, any type of cleaning product, blankets and towels. Please help support this worthy organization by bringing in your donation to SEPA's meeting on May 12!
Thank you!
AWP provides a full range of assistance and support services for victims of domestic abuse and violence and their children, including a free 24-hour confidential hotline, a full-service residential shelter, individual and group counseling, legal and medical advocacy, and a children’s program. As domestic violence is a community issue, requiring community effort and support to successfully eradicate, AWP also provides comprehensive community-based domestic violence training, education, outreach, and advocacy.
Founded in 1976 as a storefront, drop-in domestic violence counseling center in Sellersville, PA, A Woman’s Place incorporated as a private, non profit organization the following year. Above that storefront center was AWP’s first shelter for women seeking shelter from abuse. The first woman seeking safety arrived with her two children at the tiny, one-room shelter apartment on Christmas Eve 1976.
The office for A Woman’s Place is now located in Doylestown and their shelter size has grown considerably, as has the need for contributions from the community. AWP has been selected as SEPA’s Community Outreach project for our August chapter meeting.
They need the following items: juice boxes and school snacks, medications (cold/flu/allergy, Tylenol, Advil, antacids, vitamins), personal products (cosmetics, hair and skin products, baby wipes, hand sanitizer), and gift cards (K-Mart, Walmart, drug stores). Please take the time to purchase a few of these items (and remember to bring them to the meeting) to help the women and children who receive shelter from abuse and violence.
Community Housing Services
Items to be collected are cleaning supplies (dish detergent, all purpose cleaner/disinfectant, toilet cleaner, sponges and small buckets, laundry detergent, etc) and paper products (toilet paper, feminine products, etc).
Community Housing Services (CHS) is a full-service 501(c)(3) non-profit housing agency based in Lansdale, PA. Founded in 1983, CHS has provided resources, crisis intervention, and long-term housing for the homeless and near homeless, victims of domestic violence, and single displaced men.
The mission objectives of CHS are:
- Crisis Intervention and supportive services as needed by the homeless to help alleviate crisis situations. Some supportive services to persons in need of low income housing, including but not limited to counseling, referrals for job training and job placement opportunities, assistance in locating child care and transportation for employment purposes.
- Safe transitional housing for single women and women with children who are victims of domestic violence. Case management to help them become independent of their abusers.
- Transitional housing and supportive services for homeless single males.
- Home ownership opportunities for low and moderate income people.
- Coordination of resources donated from the community to be used and distribution to people in need.
- Empowerment of public assistance dependent families to become financially self-sufficient.
- Advocacy for safe, decent and affordable long-term housing as needed by the target population.
- referrals of services to other agencies are provided to people who need them.
Great Sprout Tuck-In PJ Program
For the February 11, 2009 Meeting we collected 82 Pj's and a few books to be donated to the PJ project. Thank you for your generous donations!
Founded in 2001, the Pajama Program has since grown and distributed over 200,000 pairs of pajamas and close to 100,000 books to children in need. Hundreds of thousands of children have been abandoned or placed into the foster care system and most are deprived of any love at all. Every two minutes, a child enters the foster care system.
The goal is to help ensure that every child has a good night by donating new bedtime books and cozy new pajamas to the Pajama Program.
Please do NOT bring more than one children's book. Feel free to bring an UNLIMITED amount of PJ's from infant to size 16. We are requesting no more than one book because we have to pay to ship the items to them. PJ's don't weigh as much as the books.
Thank you for your support of our Community Outreach projects!
Coats for Kids
At our November 12th meeting, we collected 43 children's winter coats for donation. The cold weather is on its way and many families are struggling to make ends meet in these uncertain economic times. A new winter coat may make all of the difference to a less fortunate child this winter. Now is the time to clean out your closets and donate your old kids' coats to this worthy cause!
Thank you for your gently-used children's coats.
On September 27, 2008, a group of SEPA volunteers joined hundreds of others from around the area for National Public Lands Day at Valley Forge National Historic Park.
This year, our group worked on a project to repair the fencing along a section of the Schuylkill River Trail that runs through Betzwood Park. We spent the day repairing and replacing the brackets that hold the rails to the posts, as well as cleaning up litter along the way. Thanks to the hard work of our volunteers and a few others the entire three-mile section of fencing along Betzwood Park looks as good as new! Think of us the next time you walk, run, bike or rollerblade through that section of the trail.
Thank you to all of our volunteers for your continued support of this annual event!
For more information on National Public Lands Day, please visit :
http://www.publiclandsday.org/index.cfm
Read the "Thank You" letter we received from the U.S. Department of the Interior and learn more about The Friends of Valley Forge Park organization. Click Here!
August Chapter Meeting Food Drive!
At our August Chapter meeting, we collected non-perishable, non-glass food items for a donation to Philabundance.
Philabundance is the region’s largest hunger relief organization. Approximately 27% of the food produced in the U.S. goes to waste each year while millions of people go hungry. Philabundance works to change this contradiction. In fiscal 2007, they distributed 24 million pounds of food.
Philabundance serves low income residents at risk of hunger and malnutrition, of which 23% are children and 16% are senior citizens. They provide food through a network of agencies in the Delaware Valley. Member agencies include food cupboards, shelter or residential programs, social service agencies, emergency kitchens, and neighborhood distribution programs who reach people in need.
Thank you to all of our generous chapter members who helped make this another successful SEPA donation!
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