CLOTHING SALE AND MORE IN NORTH ADAMS

Some of what we have to offer. More photos below this post.

    In this post: Clothing Sale Saturday; Youth Suicide Prevention presentation on Oct. 18.

It’s finally here: The Second annual Clothing Sale to benefit the Friendship Center Food Pantry. This sale will be held on Saturday, Oct. 12, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. at All Saints Episcopal Church on Summer Street in North Adams (please use lower-level entrance facing big parking lot).

Offered will be a great selection of gently used clothing at reasonable prices. All proceeds will support the food pantry — a service of the Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative (NBIAI) — which has more than 1,400 member families in North Adams, Clarksburg and Florida.

The pantry, located at 43 Eagle St. in North Adams, has been open since February 2011. Currently it is open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. and 4 to 6 p.m. every Wednesday.

The food pantry is busier than ever, with 3,000 lbs. of food delivered by truck every Tuesday. We set a one-day record on Wednesday, Sept. 25, with 204 families served. 

We conduct sign-ins for the pantry during its first session at the First Baptist Church of North Adams, not far south of the pantry on Eagle Street. This additional space has allowed us, through partnering with other agencies, to offer staff from other agencies the chance to connect with our visiting pantry members. The cooperating programs, so far, are: The Family Place, Mass in Motion, Project Reconnect, and, most recently, a nurse from North Adams Regional Hospital. We look forward to increasing such collaborations in the future.

The NBIAI is a group of local people of various faiths who, along with others of goodwill, are working together to serve our community. We meet monthly on the third Friday of the month at the First Baptist Church of North Adams. All are welcome.

Oct. Interfaith meeting topic: Youth Suicide Prevention

The Friday, Oct. 18, Interfaith meeting will feature Bear McHugh, of Berkshire AHEC, giving a presentation on Youth Suicide Prevention. The meeting will begin at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of North Adams. All are welcome to hear and discuss our presentation on this important topic.

A total of 15 people attended the September NBIAI meeting. This, our first-ever spiritual retreat, was led by the Rev. Jennifer Gregg of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Pittsfield and Sue Walker, pantry volunteer, NBIAI Steering Committee member and retired psychotherapist. 

Through various means, pantry volunteers and others connected with the theme “Time Apart: An Invitation to Rest after Feeding 5,000,” letting the Spirit guide their individual thoughts and our resulting group reflections in new directions.

- Mark

Here are some more photos of items we had put out as of Friday, Oct. 4 — more than a week before the sale, with many more to come.

Interfaith Action Initiative considers headquarters space

The Northern Berkshire Interfaith Action Initiative will meet on Friday, Jan. 21, at 10 a.m. at the First Baptist Church of North Adams. (Use the Eagle Street entrance).

At this meeting we will decide whether to accept the generous offer of free use of an 800-square-foot storefront on Eagle Street. Several members of the Initiative toured the space during the Dec. 17 meeting. This storefront includes a bathroom, room for an office and space for storage.

In addition to giving the Initiative a visible presence downtown, the space may be suited to be a distribution hub — though not a storage facility or large-scale services center — for information, food, clothing, and other necessities. All this and more will be discussed at the January meeting.

Also at the January meeting, we will have a presentation of northern Berkshire asset maps by a representative of the Western Mass. Food Bank. This likely will give us a better idea of what needs such a space might help fill and how we could go about it.

By the end of January, the Initiative hopes to have given all northern Berkshire faith communities a chance to respond to our survey on what they are doing to meet basic human needs. We see definite trends in the nature of assistance in our preliminary results, and likely will make our final findings public in early February.

Our talks about providing volunteer assistance for clients of Louison House have moved forward, and a report on this will be on the Jan. 21 meeting agenda.

At our Dec. 17 meetng, we heard from the Rev. Peter Elvin, of St. John’s Church in Williamstown, about the voucher system for people in need which had worked well in that community, but which will stop as the Williamstown Ecumenical Association ceases. Discussing the possibility of continuinig this system on a wider scale will be on the agenda for the Jan. 21 Initiative meeting.

All are welcome to participate in the Initiative. To get on the Initiative’s e-mail announcement list, send an e-mail to northernberkshireinterfaith@gmail.com or call Mark at 664-0130. To learn more about the Initiative, visit our blog at http://northernberkshireinterfaith.blogspot.com

Opportunities Knock

The Dec. 17 meeting will be important. We have some exciting news. There is a possibility that we will get the use of storefront in North Adams. This will be a main item on our agenda. The person who made the offer has expressed interest in this Interfaith effort from the start and will attend the meeting. We likely will take a brief “field trip” to see the space.

On Monday I saw this 800-square-foot-space, with restroom, space for an office and ample storage space and am quite impressed with it.

As for the survey of what local faith communities are doing to meet basic human needs, an analysis of the results so far of our survey reveals several interesting patterns that show more exciting opportunities. For instance, some of the churches we have surveyed have food pantries from which they distribute food on a periodic basis. Two we have surveyed so far actually make trips to the Western Massachusetts Food Bank to pick up food to distribute. While great, these efforts are not coordinated with each other and could be expanded beyond once a month.

At last Friday's meeting of the Northern Berkshire Community Coalition (NBCC), a representative of the Western Mass Food Bank expressed interest in working with us on distributing their food through faith communities.

So there is an opportunity for us to be instrumental in widening the availabllity of food through faith communities in Northern Berkshire. The space we will visit could play a part. Many churches in Northern Berkshire already collatorate in the Take and Eat program, delivering Meals on Wheels to the elderly, the ill and shut-ins on weekends and holidays. I participate through the St. Anthony Kitchen at St. Elizabeth of Hungary in North Adams. This new opportunity could allow us to make more food available to families and those who do not receive Meals on Wheels.

I think to be most effective in establising what we can do on food distribution — and other areas such as providing clothing — we should try to wrap up our faith community survey by the end of January. We already have a great start. I hope on Friday to provide a list of communities we have not yet connected with. I think we should give every faith community the opportunity to comment on our survey.

When we have gathered as much information from faith communities as we can, then we can summarize and publicize our findings. I have already produced a three-page informal summary that I used as notes for the Dec. 10 meeting, which I would be happy to share with anyone interested. So producing an analysis we can publicize when our survey is complete should not take long. I will bring my preliminary summary to Friday’s meeting.

I think a positive result of our effort so far has been more of a place at the table for the faith perspective: at the North Adams downtown celebration, at the Coalition discussion of the tattered social services safety net and, upcoming, the new Systems of Care effort that the NBCC is helping start, which I mentioned in the last post. The invitation I received for this mentioned that they wanted to have the faith community represented. With clergy being stretched enough as it is, the existence of the Interfaith Action Initiative allows for greater faith representation at various community efforts and discussions.

I mentioned in the last post the end of the Williamstown Ecumenical Association and the end of its voucher system. It was suggested to me by Rabbi Jeff Goldwasser that we invite someone with knowledge of the voucher program, such as the Rev. Peter Elvin, of St. John's Episcopal in Williamstown. I think this would be a good idea, especially as the nature of this voucher program will necessitate strong clergy involvement if it continues.

I also think we should consider inviting someone from the Western Mass Food Bank, since they are interested in our effort, and from Greater Bennington Interfaith Community Services, which runs a food and fuel fund and a free medical clinic in Bennington.

Also, we should consider going to Pittsfield for a meeting of Co-Act, which is involved in interfaith service (one of their members has came to our last meeting); and perhaps visiting Brattleboro, where there is a strong interfaith effort.

There are a couple of exciting upcoming events to mention. MLK Day in January, which will once again be a community service day. And the North County Christmas Concert willl be held at First Congregational Church in North Adams (at Monument Square) on Sunday. Dec. 19, at 4 p.m. Proceeds will benefit the St. Anthony and St. Vincent de Paul Kitchens (part of Take and Eat program) and the Berkshire Food Project.

Well, there's a lot going on to think — and pray — about.

As always feel free to comment. I hope to see you Friday.