Catholic Charities, Diocese of Paterson

Our journey began on August 24, 2019 - a day for me that started with excitement as it was my 1st grandsons first trip out of the house. At 10am I got the call – 410 was on fire.  I could see the billowing smoke – millions of thoughts were racing through my mind, mostly just praying everyone was okay.   When I arrived –Paterson Fire Department was battling a 5 alarm fire – Paterson Police had set up a command post trailer right on straight street and these men and woman, who most people never see in action and don’t always get recognized for what they do; – I saw first-hand how efficient they operated. The Red Cross – assisted us setting up 200 cots and disaster care bags were provided to everyone. We then needed to evacuate the building behind us – I cannot tell you what a benefit it is to have the cell phones of your community partners – a Quick call to Saint Joes Health Ken Morris, Ken graciously opened up a whole wing of the hospital that was set for renovation, giving us a whole wing of the hospital for our 30 bed detox unit and when all was said and done around 10:30PM – with the building still smoldering, Msgr Tillyer, Angela, and I took a deep breath, realizing the magnitude of what happened, we appreciated our staff for following procedure and evacuating everyone safely, realizing that NO firefighters or emergency personnel were injured, and everyone was placed safely at least for the evening, we all looked at each other and said – we will rebuild! The building that burned down was the old Carter Wright building that built airplane wings for WW2. Like almost every non – profit, we always fit the service into the building and never have the opportunity to design the building for the service. With recovery, this is ever so important to have a conducive environment.   Planning began, with NK architects to create the best environment for those in treatment.  Paul Natoli helped us estimate the cost of the project and pretty quickly - came the realization that the cost of the building we needed for this pie in the sky dream was around 30 million dollars; and with a significant shortfall, Senator Pou Stepped in; and rallied the legislature to get us the funding we needed and we will be forever indebted to her as she saw this was a worthwhile project for not only our community in Paterson but our State.    We invested in NMTC – A whole new language of financing large projects, especially for a group of social workers. Natoli Construction is ahead of Schedule ….and 15 months from now we wish to have you back here for our grand opening We plan to have a green building – Solar parking lot, State of the art kitchen to serve the over 3000 meals a day provided by SN, hundreds of clients will come in and out of these doors for Inpatient and outpatient counseling and on the second floor our men’s halfway house will have 50 Beds.   I cannot believe this is coming to fruition

Thanksgiving is just around the corner and that means it's that time again!! This will be the 4th year that we are partnering up with local individuals, businesses and charities, including Inthyme and Catholic Charities, Diocese of Paterson to provide Thanksgiving dinners to families in need. The families that we feed live every day with food that comes from local food pantries and have never once enjoyed this simple, quality, beautiful and always much needed family time together that we all are so used to every year and likely take for granted because we have always enjoyed this blessing. We call this our “Thankful Giving” drive. We are thankful that we are blessed and we are thankful to try to help rally our community into giving, again and again, to our friend and neighbors in need. We started this on a whim in 2020 during covid. Feeling very aware of the struggles of some of our neighbors we decided to put our heads together and we were so excited that we fed 62 families that year. We were overjoyed! In 2021, we more than QUINTUPLED that number and fed 350 families. And in 2022, we raised the bar even more and fed 560 families -about 2,800 people!!! There are no words to explain the joy that we see on the faces of the families who come to pick up their meals, when they express their gratitude to us for this time with family, this time when we should ALL focus on being thankful for health and family and friends and a roof over our heads and food on our plates, and not wondering, among other things, where the next meal is going to come from. This year, we are aiming HIGH. We want to feed 1,000 families…or roughly 5,000 PEOPLE. We need your help and we need it now (please!). This year for the first time, in addition to the MANY individual (and did I mention tax deductible?) donations that we received in the past (and that we hope we will receive again this year – we can’t do this without you), we are looking for corporate sponsors. You will be prominently featured and advertised. Are you a biz owner – whether local or in the greater NJ area or, really, ANYWHERE in the country – who is thriving and wants to give back? Or do you work for a company who loves to spread joy to help those in need? Please think of those less fortunate so that they might enjoy a beautiful and fully catered Thanksgiving meal with their loved ones. EVERY donation helps. We need to raise $50,000 to feed 1,000 families. Can you help? And, if you can…will you? Please? Finally, this year we are really hoping to get some local news coverage, online, in the papers and on television. Can anyone help us make that happen? Let’s get this party started, people – please help!!!! Your tax deductible donation can be made here: https://lnkd.in/eRBmpM4E Let's all hard to help those who are less fortunate on one of the biggest days of the year that is literally earmarked for being thankful. We are #thankful – and we thank you in advance!!! Oh...and please share!