From the CEO
Dear Friends,
I pray that you are staying healthy and safe and that you and your family are thriving. As we begin to recover from nearly two years of the pandemic, we see signs of hope. Vaccination rates are high in our county and children will soon be getting vaccinated. Schools are open for in person education. Many jobs are coming back. At Catholic Charities, our staff and volunteers have done amazing work throughout the pandemic, helping ensure that families recover from the social, emotional, and economic disruption. Through CORAL, our enhanced day learning is enabling students in high poverty neighborhoods to recover from their learning loss over the past year. Through our Family Resource Centers, parents and children have ongoing access, not only to quality parent-child bonding, early childhood education and wellness support, but also the practical necessities like diapers, formula and food. Through our Food Distribution programs, we have served the equivalent of more than 18 million meals throughout the pandemic, including senior to-go meals, parish drive through distribution to thousands of families each week, and home delivery of groceries to hundreds of seniors and people with disabilities who are home-bound. We continue to help hundreds of families apply for rent relief to prevent homelessness, to help parishes respond to local needs, and to reach out to diverse communities in high poverty neighborhoods to encourage families to get vaccinated. We have helped four times more people get jobs than usual. Through our housing development arm, Charities Housing, we continue to build hundreds of units of affordable housing as fast as we can. And we continue helping refugee foster youth, immigrants, seniors, incarcerated residents, youth, kinship families, the unhoused and people struggling with mental illness. Even as we ramped up our services, the need continues. The wealth gap is the highest in decades. More families are seeking help with food, rent, and jobs. While many families benefit from the expanded Child Tax Credit and Earned Income Tax Credit, hundreds more still are unaware of the benefit and need help filing their taxes. The psychological trauma of the past two years still requires healing.
If you and your family have struggled in the past two years, you know firsthand what many of our families are experiencing and our hearts are with you. And if you and your family have been blessed this holiday season, please consider investing through Catholic Charities to support families on their path to self-sufficiency and hope.
Many blessings to you and your family during this season of hope.
All the best,
Gregory R. Kepferle CEO