Holy Cross Outreach
Holy Cross offers numerous opportunities to serve the local and wider community. Since its first beginnings, meeting in the homes of parishioners, Holy Cross committed to use 10% of its previous year's income for outreach -- a commitment Holy Cross continues from its permanent home on Myrtle Grove Road. Holy Cross also uses its time and talents within the community.
We are always evaluating our projects and looking for others we have the resources to support. Contact the Outreach Coordinator with your ideas.
Outreach Programs
Below is a list of outreach programs Holy Cross is currently engages with.
Over 500 children in New Hanover and Pender Counties are in foster care because of abuse or neglect. Volunteers are trained as independent advocates for these children and provide a voice for them in the state court system. Cape Fear Guardian Ad Litem Association provides resources for the children to enable them to receive academic tutoring, and to participate in activities such as summer camp or after school activities (music and sport programs) and receive such items as a bicycle, sports equipment, eyeglasses or a computer.
Carousel’s mission is to meet the physical, emotional and psychological needs of children who have suffered physical or sexual abuse and to educate the community about child abuse and prevention. It maintains the only area Child Advocacy Center, dedicated to providing quality child medical exams and forensic interviews of children 0-17 who are reported to have experienced sexual/physical abuse and/or neglect. It provides Child and Family Traumatic Stress Intervention and/or Trauma-Focused Behavioral Therapy regardless of a family’s ability to pay.
The Domestic Violence Center provides shelter and direct services to victims of violence and their children in New Hanover County.
This ministry, located in Newton Grove is jointly sponsored by the Dioceses of North and East Carolina. It responds to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families, and actively supports opportunities for them to become self-directive. Some of the services provided are transportation to service agencies, translation, English classes, drivers’ education classes, a migrant summer youth camp, and immigration services. Holy Cross also makes Easter Baskets for the children of the migrant workers.
Federal Point Help Center provides emergency short term assistance for individuals living in the community of Carolina Beach and surrounding vicinities. It provides a food pantry, emergency money for medication and medical assistance, emergency lodging, emergency rent and utility assistance, transportation assistance, clothing and miscellaneous needs, as well as holiday programs such as Christmas grocery baskets. It also houses Jennifer’s Closet which supplies school clothes for needy children.
Habitat is a non-profit ecumenical Christian ministry. Habitat works with families in need of safe, decent and affordable homes. Potential homeowners must become active participants in building the home and must provide “sweat equity” by working alongside volunteers to help build the home and by taking home ownership classes and paying an affordable mortgage. Habitat follows a nondiscriminatory policy of family selection. Neither race nor religion factors in choosing a Habitat homeowner.
Located at the Jo Ann Carter Harrelson Center, Help Hub is a collaborative outreach program working with other nonprofit partners in the Wilmington community. Together they provide centralized humanitarian services to the Wilmington community. Help Hub itself provides short term or emergency financial assistance to individuals and families and refers them to Harrelson Center partners and other community resources for guidance and support. Holy Cross is a Patron member of the Help Hub.
Kairos’s mission is to address the spiritual needs of prisoners and their families. Over 30,000 volunteers bring the light and love and friendship of Jesus to prisoners and to those impacted by their incarceration. The Kairos program is a weekend of talks and meditations inviting prisoners to live in a personal relationship with Jesus. After the weekend Kairos provides opportunities for continuing ministry designed to build a Christian community which nurtures and supports them in their faith walk.
LINC focuses on empowering individuals with criminal histories or youth that are at-risk of becoming serious offenders, to make positive life choices and to empower men and women returning from prison to integrate into the community. It provides transitional living and case management services that meet the immediate needs of ex-offenders. LINC also refers clients to other social service agencies that provide services to further facilitate their reintegration into the community.
1.7 million children will have a parent in prison at Christmas. Prisoners sign their children up for Angel Tree Christmas and each child is assigned to a local church. Holy Cross members choose a child and buy and wrap a gift the child has requested.
Holy Cross adopts 25-30 students at Brigade Club and provides each child with a backpack and necessary supplies to start their school year.
Holy Cross collects food donations weekly for both The Help Center of Federal Point (see above) (canned goods & peanut butter) and for the Overseas Men and Women in the Military (canned meats and soups, ready-made puddings and jello, wrapped candies, energy or granola bars, soaps, wipes and old magazines). To suggest a recipient in the U.S. military stationed overseas please contact the Coordinator.
Good Shepherd Center feeds the hungry, shelters the homeless and fosters the transition of those in crisis to independence in the community. Its Soup Kitchen provides over 100,000 meals each year. It has both day and night shelters for home- less men, women and children. It has a jobs program, a medical clinic and an eighteen-month transitional housing program for homeless veterans and individuals in substance abuse recovery. Teams at Holy Cross volunteer on a rotating basis to cook and/or serve a meal every 4th Sunday.
Provides free week-long vacations for breast cancer patients and their families believing that the cancer diagnosis does not just affect the patient, but the entire family. Participants are housed in private properties, are provided all meals with lunch and dinner as a group with other participants and morning and evening activities are arranged. The Carolina Beach retreat takes place in the Spring. Holy Cross provides lunch for about 60 people, including families and volunteers.
Hospice offers compassion, dignity, comfort and respect to infants, children and adults facing a life-limiting illness. Hospice provides health care assistance and education to support these patients and their families. Anyone -- family, friends, patients and clergy -- can make referrals to Hospice. Holy Cross volunteers provide lunch ("a meal of love") to Hospice Center staff and visitors once a month so that families can enjoy a meal without having to leave their loved ones.
For Hospice meal preparation, contact Lenora Norris, 910-232-0873
An opportunity to be part of a community that desires to build bridges of love, friendship and peace with our local Muslim neighbors. We meet monthly for training and to engage with our Muslim neighbors in dialog, eating together and community service.
Volunteers collect food from area grocery stores, restaurants and bakeries for distribution to the hungry through the Soup Kitchen at Good Shepherd (see above) and 20 other local feeding groups. Each year, thousands of pounds of food that would otherwise be thrown away are salvaged and directed to those in need. Holy Cross volunteers collect food and deliver it to Good Shepherd on the fifth Saturday of the month.
Unintentional drug overdoses are the leading cause of injury deaths in North Carolina. Volunteers prepare kits containing naloxone which counters the effect of an opioid overdose. Since 2013 NCHRC has dispensed over 100,000 free kits that include naloxone and have received 13,394 confirmed reports that the medication was administered successfully by lay people. In 2018, Holy Cross put together 1,000 naloxone kits for the NCHRC to dispense.