Agency Partner

Today I received a stack of handwritten thank you notes from folks in our community being served by "The Phoenix Shanti Group". Shanti is one of our agency partners that provides housing, education and direct client services to individuals and families infected with and affected by HIV/AIDS. One of their training programs is designed to provide the student with the skills needed to become a nurse's assistant. It is tough for the students to go to school, maintain a family and work. So the agency turns to St Mary's for emergency food boxes to assist the students while they complete their training. I wish I could share all of the notes with you but that is not practical. However, here are a couple of quotes from some of the letters.

"I would like to thank you for the time put into preparing our food boxes. They were wonderful and very helpful. I really appreciated it and it came just in time"

"It is hard enough supporting ourselves, but with no job while attending school, your assistance was more than you can imagine. They were encouragement and blessings....not only for myself and my classmates, but for our families"

"Sometimes it is difficult to focus on success and achievement if we are worried about feeding ourselves and our families. The food boxes contained high quality food and I was overwhelmed by the generosity of the boxes"

"the boxes really helped me at home with my food and my son with diapers"

How can you read those comments and not feel good about what our donors enable us to do for the community?