St. John's Church

A Welcoming Episcopal Community in Larchmont, NY

Easter Appeal 2019 – Results

The beneficiary of the 2019 Easter Appeal was Lifting Up Westchester (LUW), a social services agency that has been providing homeless and poverty services to Westchester’s men, women, and children in need for forty years. (St John’s has a long tradition of preparing food for the Open Arms Shelter, which is a LUW initiative.) The agency shelters and feeds 3,000 Westchester residents annually and provides youth programs to help homeless and low-income children be the first in their families to go to college—and the last to live in poverty.

LUW is launching a new program called Pathways to Self-Sufficiency which is designed to help homeless individuals from their Open Arms Men’s Shelter and Samaritan House Women’s Shelter find—and keep—stable housing. They asked for our help to get Pathways off the ground, and through our Easter Appeal, St. John’s raised $21,190! Click here to read the thank you letter from LUW Director of Development, Ms. Chris Schwartz.

Pathways to Self-Sufficiency is a program designed to create permanent solutions to end homelessness in Westchester. Pathways to Self-Sufficiency is a multi-pronged program that will do just that. It will help homeless individuals find affordable housing quickly, provide job training and assistance in finding employment, teach life skills like cooking and budgeting, and follow individuals for 6-12 months after they move into their new homes to address any issues that could result in a return to homelessness.

The funds raised through our Easter Appeal will help to implement the critical Life Skills Training portion of the program. While most of us take things like cooking, cleaning, shopping and budgeting for granted, many shelter clients have been institutionalized all their lives (foster homes, prison, shelters) and have never had the opportunity to learn those skills. They need to be taught how to prepare meals, pay bills, budget etc. in order to live successfully on their own. LUW plans to hire a Life Skills Coordinator to provide that training.

Thank you to all who supported this important effort. Together, we make a huge difference!