Community Outreach
Community Supported Agriculture
Staten Island Community Supported Agriculture is a group of Staten Islanders who buy shares in a farmer's vegetable and fruit crop for the growing season. We support Starbrite Farm and John Krueger, the farmer, and share the risks and benefits of food production with him.
There are dozens of other community-supported agriculture (CSA) groups in the New York metropolitan area, all coordinated by Just Food. Typically, members or "share-holders" of the farm or garden pay for a share in advance to cover the anticipated costs of the farm operation and farmer's salary. In return, they receive shares in the farm's bounty throughout the growing season, as well as satisfaction gained from reconnecting to the land and participating directly in food production.
Members also share in the risks of farming, including poor harvests due to unfavorable weather or pests. However, by direct sales to community members who have provided the farmer with working capital in advance, growers receive better prices for their crops, gain some financial security, and are relieved of much of the burden of marketing.
Another benefit of the program is that farmers can continue to make a living on their land and pass their farms to their chilcren rather than be forced to sell to developers to pay for retirement. CSAs, therefore, help maintain open land near metropolitan areas. They also reduce members' reliance on vegetables and fruit trucked across the U.S. and from other countries.
Click here for more information about the Staten Island Community Supported Agriculture program.
Staten Island Hunger Task Force
The Staten Island Hunger Task Force is a coalition of dozens of soup kitchens, community service centers, houses of worship, food pantries, and other organizations that have banded together to fight hunger on Staten Island. The Task Force works with City Harvest to collect food resources and distribute those resources to the people that need them.
It is the mission of the Staten Island Hunger Task Force to advocate for the needs of food-insecure families and individuals and not-for-profit emergency feeding programs in order to ensure that hunger needs are met in the borough of Staten Island.
The Hunger Task Force is committed to bringing awarness to the issue of hunger in our borough in order to muster the will of community leaders and members to fight for an end to hunger on Staten Island.
We will support the work of our local emergency feeding programs through education, advocacy, and coordination of services as well as support the sity, state, and federal positions that advance both sufficient anti-hunger resources as well as an end to hunger itself.
Holiday Food Baskets
Christ Church provides 200 holiday dinners three times a year – Thanksgiving, Christmas, and Easter – to needy families on Staten Island. Each dinner contains a turkey, ham, or chicken and at least ten additional items, such as pasta, cornbread, canned vegetables, canned fruit, and dessert. The program is operated by Christ Church and is funded by Councilwoman Rose, Councilman Oddo, former Councilman Mitchell, Episcopal Charities, Episcopal Church Women, and private donations.
Second Saturday Feeding Program
Christ Church has taken part in the Saturday Feeding Program at Trinity Lutheran Church since at least 1993. On the second Saturday of each month a group of Christ Church parishioners prepares enough food to feed about 120 people.
For the year beginning in January 2014 we have updated all of our recipes for this program with the aim of providing more nutricious and healthy food for our clients. Staten Island has an alarmingly high number of people who are considered "food insecure," meaning that they are not sure where their next meal is coming from. Some believe the number may be as high as 20% of all Islanders, which basically translates to one in five people. Spend one Saturday at Trinity Lutheran Soup Kitchen and you'll be convinced that perhaps that estimate is too small.
Christ Church Knitting Group
It's not cast in stone. You don't have to sign anything. There are no dues, it's free. No one takes attendance, you can show up or not, it's up to you. Sometimes there's only a couple of people, sometimes we're crowded round the table like the close-knit group we are (snicker).
Contrary to popular belief, the Christ Church Knitting Group is NOT a bunch of "70-years-old-plus" people sitting around eating pastries, drinking tea and other soft beverages, and yakking away about this and that and everything in between, all the while knitting scarves for seamen and hats and other clothing for infants (including blankets and pillows). It's not like that at all, no siree. There's a couple forty-year-olds there, as well. And sometimes a nine-year-old.
The knitting group meets on the second and fourth Thursday of each month in the Vestry room. As indicated above, there's usually a pastry available and coffee, tea, juice, or other light refreshments. The Christ Church Knitting Group is open to the following:
- People who have never before in their lives knit.
- Experienced knitters.
- People who want to learn to knit.
- People who are knitters, but not so experienced.
- People who know how to macramé, but not knit.
- People who used to knit all the time but haven't lately and would like to get back into the knitting-saddle.
- Bad knitters who want to improve.
- Good knitters who want to excel.
- Excellent knitters who want to poke fun at the rest of us.
- People who like pastries and tea but are not so partial to knitting, but maybe have a good joke to share.
- Fat kids, skinny kids, kids who climb on rocks.
- Tough kids, sissy kids, even kids with chicken pox.
If you fit into any of the categories above, or several categories, or no categories at all, you are welcome to join the Christ Church Knitting Group. We do not discriminate based on race, creed or color. We discriminate based on shoe size, so no ducks, clowns, or sasquatches, please. Everyone else is welcome. We hope to see you there. Actually, we wouldn't mind having a duck there. Or a sasquatch. But we're afraid we're going to have to draw the line at clowns.
Worldwide Anglican Community
Episcopal Church of the US
NY Episcopal Diocese
Staten Island Council of Churches