Helping Others
We are told that we should give in response to what we have been given. Many feel closest to God when they give of their time to help the world around them. Boulevard has many opportunities to roll up your sleeves and help serve our Columbus area community and beyond. Check out some of the ways that you can get involved and make a difference.
Mission Project Updates
This year, Boulevard was able to donate 140 soup mixes and some extra bags of beans. This was almost twice as many mixes as last year’s donation!
Thank you to all who donated beans for our bean soup project. There is an increase in food insecurity during this pandemic winter, and we were able to assemble a very generous number of packages for those in need. The mixes come complete with spices, canned tomatoes, and instructions to make a big, healthy, filling pot of soup.
Thanks also to Marlin Cheyney who helped plan, complete the packaging with the instruction sheet, and took the mixes to NNEMAP.
Praise God for this opportunity to feed people!
Food Mission Donations
Boulevard Presbyterian Church has partnered with NNEMAP, the Near Northside Emergency Material Assistance Program, to help fight hunger here in our neighborhood through funding, food collection, volunteers, and more.
Our nutritional focus is food with a higher protein content. If you can, please add these items to your grocery list: Chunky Soup, Canned Chicken, Peanut Butter, Canned Pasta (i.e., Spaghettios), Canned Pork and Beans.
Plus – We have an oral hygiene focus as well. Please consider donating toothpaste and/or toothbrushes (adult or child sizes) along with your food donations. NNEMAP also accepts the HOTEL shampoo, soap, lotion, and coffee packets provided to guests. Don’t throw these sample products away as they can be offered to NNEMAP clients when resources for these items are low. And of course, those brown paper grocery bags are always welcomed.
Please place your donations in the large wooden cabinet in the narthex with the “Food Mission” sign on it. A Big Thanks from NNEMAP!
YWCA Family Center Dinner Hosting/Delivery
In the late 1980’s, Boulevard Presbyterian Church began participating in the Interfaith Hospitality Network, a collection of faith communities that sought to fight hunger and homelessness by providing housing and meals for some of Franklin County’s poorest families. Since October of 2005 families that would have received housing and meals at local congregations like Boulevard have been cared for at the YWCA Family Center where members and friends have provided a nutritious hot meal six times a year since 2005.
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance
Presbyterian Disaster Assistance enables the members and friends of Boulevard Presbyterian Church have made disaster relief and support a priority. Mission trips to flood ravaged areas, hygiene kits to Haiti and beyond, as well as participating in special offerings are just some of the ways we have responded to help.
Open Shelter Lunches
In 1983, The Open Shelter became Ohio’s first 24 hour Emergency Walk-In shelter for the ever increasing number of homeless persons living on the streets of Central Ohio. By providing housing, food, medical and legal services, Open Shelter is helping to meet a great need in our city.
Community Christmas Boxes
What began many years ago as a small project to provide food for a Christmas dinner to families who would be without has grown into a community-wide mission project that now provides over 300 “baskets” filled with food for needy Columbus area families each December.
Truly a community enterprise, Boulevard receives donations of food, money and supplies from our congregation as well as schools, other churches, social and service clubs and individual families. This year we are particularly grateful for Tri Village Lions, Steve Coup and Coup Restoration, Johnstone Supply Co., Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Boy Scout Troops 33, 73 and 86, the Grandview Heights City Schools and the Grandview Kids Club, and Schmidt & Associates. These groups help greatly in our effort to assemble and deliver boxes a week before Christmas to families all over the Columbus area.
For questions or additional information about this ministry, please contact Jane Swinford at [email protected]