Peg Keenen - ICA Executive Director

Our Program on January 31st was a presentation by Peg Keenan, who is the executive director of ICA, our local area’s food shelf.

The ICA was started in 1971 when 5 church congregations met to address the issue of providing for area residents who lost their jobs or were temporarily in trouble. They wanted a way to help these people for the short haul – there were many programs to deal with longer term issues.

The ICA helps people with three types of services by providing food for the families when in need, by giving financial help if required, and by offering help in finding jobs. In the past year, 5900 people were served by their programs.

Some data that Peg provided: they receive funding from the public through two fund-raisers  (Sizzle for a Cause {which is coming up shortly – get your tickets from Scott Zerby} and the Empty Bowls program). Almost all of the grocery stores/chains give their extra produce to them for distribution. They accept food donations from the public, but they prefer cash, as they can buy food at super-discounted prices. There are now 37 church congregations involved in the program, and all of their great work is done by 6 full time employees, 12 part time workers and about 1,000 volunteers.

Peg gave us lots of information, although many of our members are active volunteers in the program.

 

STRIVE was held on Thursday, February 2^nd with Darel Leipold presenting on making Choices both good and bad.  Darel used Robert Frost’s poem “A Road Less Traveled” to talk about the choices we make in live and how they affect our life’s journey and that the students should develop good decision making tools to help guide their way.