The offices of Shippensburg Community Resource Coalition (SCRC) are right next door to our church! This makes for a very collaborative partnership, as SCRC coordinates and makes accessible human resources in our Shippensburg area. Although they are now in a time of discernment regarding restructuring, in the past they have had working groups addressing the systemic issues of inadequate housing, food insecurity (coordinating the Community Meal Program and the Hounds Pack Program which provides weekend food for families), accessible transportation, and youth behavioral and substance abuse issues.
Here’s their Mission Statement and how they fulfill it:
SCRC Mission Statement
The Shippensburg Community Resource Coalition is a collaborative effort to provide quality social services and youth programs that are accessible and safe and that recognize the dignity and worth of each person. Our goal is to help community members reach their full potential.
We work to fulfill our mission in the following ways:
• Working with existing programs in surrounding communities to encourage them to provide services in Shippensburg.
• Regularly assessing community needs and resources.
• Creating new services as necessary.
• Partnering with other community programs to strengthen our collective efforts.
This coalition is a major collaborator and supporter of our mission in the neighborhood. This past year, we participated in their Summer Learning Program which is a 7 week program providing food and programming for neighborhood children. We were able to host a day at Grace Place Gardens where we engaged in two activities: 1) harvest vegetables from our garden and create a lunch for everyone with the organic produce (the meal was amazingly delicious!) and the young people took seriously our directive to invite anyone they see coming into the garden or walking through to stay for lunch, for that’s always our invitation, and they did ask others and they stayed — it was marvelous! and 2) create blessing cards for the food blessing boxes so that people can receive an encouraging message while picking out food. The whole day was a wonderful success — and we look forward to our time next summer with the neighborhood children and youth.
Here’s the website of SCRC, so you can see details of all they offer to our community.
Here’s a link to the monthly Community Meal Program.
Here are some photos of the wonderful time we had last year at the Summer Learning Program day at Grace Place.
We have been blessed to be given the opportunity by SCRC for their interns to participate in our ministry at Grace Place. Most recently, we benefited from an intern who helped us develop our “Get Cooking with SPO” videos, when we worked collaboratively with SPO to create videos which offered ideas and instruction on how to create simple and nutritious meals with the weekly offerings by SPO. The intern helped us create a logo, assisted in the cooking demonstrations, posted the videos on social media, and editing of the videos. It was a beautiful collaboration between local organizations to help the hungry people of the neighborhood to have all the resources necessary to prepare and eat healthy meals.
