Reach out and make a difference... In addition to Santa Maria Urban Ministry, and on-campus programs, parish life at St. Jude's includes volunteers and financial support for other programs that address the needs of disadvantaged in our greater community. What are the ways you might be involved?

Family Supportive Housing

Family Supportive Housing's San Jose Family Shelter provides shelter for families who find themselves unable to find affordable housing. It accommodates 32 families and is only homeless shelter in Santa Clara County that allows parents and children to stay together as they work to stabilize their lives.

St. Jude’s has been a valued part of their support network since its founding. Several times each year parish volunteers provide dinner to the residents at the shelter. Contact Andy DeBaets (debaets@hotmail.com), or Jeff Hultquist (jhultquist@me.com), if you would like to join in this effort.  

There are many ways to help. Interesting and varied tasks include:  evening care for preschoolers and a homework enrichment program, dinner servers and kitchen aides, workshop facilitators. To learn more, contact Christi Moyer Kelly, Volunteer Coordinator, at 408.926.8885 x.106

The shelter provides counseling and medical assistance to enable the residents to achieve economic independence. Meals and childcare are provided. It includes a Head Start program. School age children attend regular classrooms nearby. St. Jude's dinner teams (including youth group members) have served here once a month for over 20 years.

In addition to volunteers from the St. Jude's community, the parish has made annual contributions of Outreach funds toward the operating budget of the shelter.

Bill Wilson Center

The Bill Wilson Center's mission is to support and strengthen the community by serving youth and families through counseling, housing, education, and advocacy. Bill Wilson serves over 10,000 clients in Santa Clara County annually through some 12 different programs that are inspired and highly effective.

• For anyone experiencing depression, anxiety, grief, loneliness, parental stress, or general hard times Bill Wilson provides a:  24 hr Crisis Line (408) 850-6125
• Another service is a hotline for youth ages 7-24, providing supportive listening, crisis intervention, information and referrals. Youth may call anytime for any reason.  24-7 Line for Youth — (888) 247-7717
• They maintain a runaway and homeless youth shelter and provides family and youth counseling;
• Bill Wilson has a special focus on serving teens in Foster Care who can loose family support as they "age out" of Foster Care after turning 18;
• Centre for Living with Dying, provides emotional support to adults and children facing life-threatening illness or the trauma of having a loved one die.

St. Jude's parishioners, including high school aged youth, have volunteered at Bill Wilson Center. The parish has provided Outreach funds to support the valuable work that Bill Wilson Center does for all of the communities of Silicon Valley.

Julian Street Inn

Julian Street Inn is the only South Bay shelter that provides emergency shelter to clients diagnosed with mental illness.

Seventy beds are available for men and women who have been diagnosed with a mental illness and are actively engaged in the mental health care system. Clients may stay for up to 60 days.

Individuals receive one-on-one counseling and support, as well as participation in support groups. The groups are designed to help clients increase their coping skills, maintain sobriety, and develop resources to help them maintain independence.

For more than a decade, St. Jude's has provided financial support to the Julian Street Inn.  In prior years teams of volunteers cooked meals for the shelter.
 

Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy

Correctional Institutions Chaplaincy (CIC) is a long-standing non-denominational program that touches the lives of hundreds of men, women, boys, and girls in county jails and juvenile facilities.

CIC's chaplains, both ordained and lay, bring a redemptive message of hope, forgiveness, and Christ's love to angry, frustrated, hurting, rejected people.

Over the years St. Jude's has provided dedicated volunteers whose committement supports bible study and other programs weeky.  

CIC seeks creative ways to spread the gospel through drama, art, etc. as well as a variety of liturgical experiences and support activities.

Speaking to a St. Jude's Adult Forum, Executive Director David Robinson encouraged us to open our hearts to this ministry.

There are many ways to be involved -- through prayer, legislative advocacy, one-on-one visitation, Bible study, worship services, drama, art, or storytelling, support for literacy programs, as well as aftercare support. Contact Caolyn Bowker for more information.
 

SJSPIRIT Campus Ministry at San Jose State University

SJSPIRIT, is the part of the Episcopal Canterbury Community of ministries to young people. Led by  Chaplain, Rev. Roger Wharton, it provides outreach to college students and young adults in Silicon Valley who are on a spiritual path or are interested in exploring the spiritual world.

"SJSPIRIT is a progressive campus Christian Student Group which means we choose to view the world influenced by the teaching and life of Jesus.... We strive for peace and justice among all people, protecting and restoring the integrity of all God's creation, and bringing hope to those Jesus called the least of his sisters and brothers."

SJSpirit invites people of all faiths, or no faith, traditions and backgrounds to participate in a welcoming, affirming and open community that offers spiritual education and guidance.

Rev. Wharton has brought SJSPIRIT to St. Jude's for a labrynth walk and dicussion of what it means to be a progressive Christian. Parishoners have fond memories of the role the Canterbury program had in their lives while at SJSU.  At various times St. Jude's clergy have partnered with SJSPIRIT.  St. Jude's has consistently provided annual financial support.
 

Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley

Rebuilding Together brings volunteers together to rehabilitate the homes of low income homeowners, particularly the elderly and disabled, so that they may live in warmth, safety and independence. The majority of the low-income homeowners served are elderly or disabled individuals, or residents who are physically and financially unable to maintain safe and warm living conditions for themselves and their families. St. Jude's Outreach first took on a Rebuilding Together Silicon Valley project in 2007. Since then, under Jeff and Mary Hultquist’s leadership, parish volunteers have worked on two projects a year, helping elderly living alone, a half-way house and others in need of making neglected repairs.
 

Habitat for Humanity Silicon Valley

This local chapter of Habitat for Humanity builds a small number of houses each year in the Silicon Valley. The funds contributed to Silicon Valley Habitat are used to purchase land and materials. Construction is accomplished by volunteers working under the direction of professional construction people, most of whom are themselves are volunteers, The houses are provided to low-income families for the cost of materials and with a 30 year loan at 0% interest. Qualifying families must complete at least 500 hours of work alongside volunteers. Silicon Valley Habitat has built 37 homes.

Numerous volunteers from St. Jude's, from youth to adults, have worked on Habitat job sites over the years. Linda Morris has regularly organized St. Jude's workdays. Several parishioners work regularly with habitat, including Syd Jacobsen and Howard Hill.
 

Books Aloud

The Books Aloud "Reading by Listening" program provides a wide variety of recorded reading literature to eligible individuals of all ages. Their mission is to keep the "Magic of Reading" alive for the blind, visually impaired, learning disabled or physically disabled individuals who are unable to read conventional print, hold a book or turn pages. More than 100 Books Aloud volunteers record books-on-tape that are distributed free-of-charge to 2,200 clients, from the blind, to autistic children, to older individuals with macular degeneration, to sufferers of muscular dystrophy, diabetes and arthritis. They make mini-libraries available to schools and other organizations that serve these populations in Santa Clara County, including the Live Oak Senior Day Care center on St. Jude's campus. For more than 25 years Joyce Herzog, a St. Jude's parishioner, has volunteered weekly at Books Aloud, recording books of all kinds for the individuals they serve.