Activities & Events

The Faith to Face Poverty Week committee has developed lists of activities suitable for adults and for families/intergenerational groups. These are also subjectively listed from easy, low-level, inexpensive commitment to harder, higher level of commitment.

ADULT ACTIVITIES

1. Bring in a speaker from a local agency to speak on some aspect of poverty in our communities for Adult Education Hour/Adult Forum.

2. Have a speaker from the Fox Cities Project Promise Poverty Coalition Speaker’s Bureau come out and speak about the wonderful work that Project Promise is engaging in. Contact Mary Wisnet at mary.wisnet@unitedwayfoxcities.org to set this up.

3. Visit http://www.gratefulness.org (spiritual ideas rooted in gratefulness).

4. Have the “Poverty Overview” PowerPoint emailed to you to show to your community and start a discussion on this issues on our community (see the Poverty Facts section for more information).

5. Fall cleaning - challenge yourself to fill your backseat/trunk within the next week with items to donate to Goodwill or St. Vincent de Paul.

6. Organize a food drive at your place of worship/employment. Donate the food raised to a local food pantry (i.e. - St. Joe’s, Neenah-Menasha Red Cross, Hortonville Food Pantry).

7. Host a Suds for the Shelter drive for 1-2 weeks (shampoo, detergent, dish soap) and donate to the Emergency Shelter of the Fox Valley, COTS, Harbor House Domestic Abuse Shelter, Christine Anne Domestic Abuse Shelter.

8. Socks, socks, socks – Did you ever think about the fact that persons who are homeless or living in poverty may consider this to be a luxury that they cannot afford? This may not be a problem in Wisconsin summers, but in our winters…. Consider holding a new (and possibly gently used) month-long sock drive at your congregation and donating it to a local homeless shelter or similar organization.

9. Do you have an extra crib, high chair, refrigerator, kitchen table/chairs you’re not using? See if Harbor House can use it; if not, donate it to Goodwill or St. Vincent DePaul.

10. Host a “CASH FOR GAS” Drive and donate the funds raised to the LEAVEN.

11. Write a letter to the editor in support of a non-profit organization and the benefits that it provides to the community at large.

12. Write a letter to the editor in support of policies that are effective in assisting those in poverty. Keep up to date with this by checking the Project Promise webstie (www.projectpromisefoxcities.org) or the Wisconsin Council on Children & Families (www.wccf.org).

13. Take advantage of Buy One, Get One Free specials at area stores and donate the extra items.

14. Help coordinate an Alternative Gift Fair at your faith community. An Alternative Gift Fair is a holiday experience hosted by a faith community that is generally open to the entire community. It can be offered 1-2 days or on several consecutive weekends, generally beginning shortly after Thanksgiving. It is a way to bypass the crowds in the mall and buying more “stuff” for people by donating to causes that honor their values. The coordinator of the fair determines what kinds of “items” they will have available. It can include donations to local, national and international charities. For example, instead of buying another sweater for Granny and a tie for dad, you might buy 3 chickens for a family in Thailand, backpacks for children in Appalachia, or compact fluorescent light bulbs for low income families in rural Wisconsin.  For each donation, the giver received a holiday card with a description of the organization and gift. For more information or ideas, type Alternative Gift Fair into your search engine and you will find many results to review.

15. Do you have a musical instrument you no longer use? Call one or two local elementary schools and see if the music teacher knows of a child who could benefit from your old tuba or clarinet? Or donate it to the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund (www.nomrf.org/donations.html) .

16. Donate the cost of eating Sunday breakfast out for a month to a local charity. Have members of your community pledge a certain number of Sundays in a month or two-month period to donate.

17. Set up a box in the break room at work where people can bring in unwanted coupons and exchange for coupons they want.

18. Attend the Project Promise Volunteer & Resource Fair to be held on the first floor of the City Centre in conjunction with the Appleton Farmer’s Market on July 18^th from 8 to noon. Learn about volunteer opportunities available in the Fox Valley area as well as about some of the wonderful program and services that are offered for those in need.

19. Put up a mitten/hat tree in late October so you can donate the items to the Community Clothes Closet or Lutheran Social Service’s Urban Threads before it gets really cold out.

20. Go through training and donate 8-16 hours at a Habitat for Humanity home building site. Not handy with a hammer? Provide the morning snack or lunch for the work crew. Or donate time at the Habitat Restore in Appleton. Perhaps set a goal to reach a certain total number of hours as a faith community.

21. Sort items at the Community Clothes Closet or Lutheran Social Service’s Urban Threads once a week for a month.

22. Prepare a bulletin insert each weekend for a month featuring the story of an area non-profit agency devoted to helping those in need.

23. Take any store’s flyer from the Sunday paper and use all of the food coupons; buy the items and donate to a local food pantry or homeless or domestic abuse shelter.

24. Take the 5-day hunger challenge concept to your church body or faith community and educate them and then challenge them on dealing with hunger.  Ask your people to step into the experience.  Invite them to live on beans and rice (low cost mercy food) for 5 days and save the money they normally spend at the grocery store and donate that to your faith community or a local organization for combating hunger.  It is a great experiential example and provides great stories and changed hearts.  Millions of people live on beans and rice and millions more wish they could.  We have it so good in America…step into the challenge!!!

25. Donate money to the CAP Services Skills Enhancement Program. Since education is the key out of poverty, CAP Skills helps employed low- and middle-income individuals take classes to improve their skills so they can obtain jobs paying higher wages. Go to www.capservices.org to find out how to donate. If you can offer a service or have a neat item to donate, their Golf “Inside Out”ing fund-raiser each January would love your item for the Silent Auction.

26. Volunteer on the St. Joe’s food collection vans one morning a week for 3 months as they collect food donations from local restaurants and stores; or sort donations once they are delivered to the pantry.

27. Volunteer to teach Sunday School or drop in as a “guest teacher” and lead an exercise on understanding poverty for each class over the next few months (see Children’s Activities & Resources section for more information).

28. Volunteer at BABES once a week for 3 months to provide child care or tutoring.

29. Commit to visiting www.sacredspace.ie/ (daily on-line prayer guide using Judeo-Christian scripture readings) for a month.

30. Join the Social Concerns Ministry at your house of worship or volunteer to join the advisory board at a local non-profit; plan on a 1-2 year commitment.

31. Speak with your social concerns group about getting involved in the NOAHH program (Neighbors Offering a Helping Hand). This program connects individuals, churches, community organizations and agencies with children and families served by the Outagamie County Dept. of Human Services to help meet their most basic needs. For more info, call Penny at 832-5515.

32. Help someone learn to read; there is a proven link between low levels of literacy and high levels of poverty. Tutor someone for a year through the Fox Valley Literacy Coalition.

33. Call Big Brothers/Big Sisters or Best Friends of Neenah-Menasha or PALS and volunteer to be a “Big” for a child in need for the next year.

34. Organize/host a Hunger Banquet, with food proportional to hunger in the world – 40% of the world population lives in poverty. Details at www.oxfam.org. The premise is that some people get a meal of water and bread, some get rice and beans, some get chicken, one gets beef.

35. Become a volunteer mentor for CAP Services Project Team Family Mentoring Program; this requires a 1-year commitment of about 4-6 hours per month.

36. Donate your used car to WINR or your used boat to Rawhide.

INTERGENERATIONAL ACTIVITIES

1. Host a Garden Drive and have members of your community take some of that extra zucchini and other produce (or apples/pears from your trees) to St. Joe’s Food Pantry soon.

2. Walk in the Crop Walk on October 11; get lots of sponsors! Contact Memorial Presbyterian in Appleton for details (see enclosed materials at the end of this section for more details and information on how to register).

3. Have a book read of the book Seedfolks by Paul Fleischmann and host discussion circles on the benefits of community gardening. Secure free copies of the book for your community by contacting Andrew Konkel at CAP Services at akonkel@capmail.org.

4. Offer a pumpkin decorating contest in your neighborhood with a small entry fee; winner gets a token prize and the rest of the money is donated to LEAVEN.

5. Trick or Treat for Unicef (www.unicef.org). Consider making it a youth event for your faith community.

6. The next 3 times you want to rent a movie, go to the library instead and get a free movie, throw the money you saved in a jar & donate the cost of the movies.

7. Schedule a time to ring bells for Salvation Army in November or December. This would be a great family or youth group activity.

8. Hold a Souper Bowl event, in which all worshippers are asked to bring a can of soup to church for each family member –donate them to the food pantry at St. Joe’s, Neenah-Menasha Red Cross, or Hortonville Food Pantry. To make it more exciting, have posters for 2-4 NFL teams and the “winner” is the one that has the most cans of soup in front of it at the end of the event. This does not have to occur on Super Bowl Sunday.

9. Participate in one of two poverty simulations that are being offered during this week-long event. One will be held on October 9^th and the other on October 15^th.Get a group (5-20 people or more!) to participate in one of these simulations and get an idea of what those in poverty experience on a daily basis. This is free of charge and a wonderful opportunity. Space is limited to the first 172 people that sign up as well as 30 volunteers are needed that will need to show up 45 minutes prior to the start to be trained. Refer to the last page in the section for more information and find out how to register.

10. Call Big Brothers/Big Sisters of the Fox Valley or Best Friends of Neenah-Menasha or PALS and volunteer to help with an upcoming event.

11. Make a batch of popcorn and watch/discuss the 20-minute children’s movie: The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard at www.storyofstuff.com:80/index.html.

12. Oxfam International is a confederation of 13 like-minded organizations working together and with partners and allies around the world to bring about lasting change. We work directly with communities and we seek to influence the powerful to ensure that poor people can improve their lives and livelihoods and have a say in decisions that affect them. Find out how we work with others to end poverty and injustice, from campaigning to responding to emergencies.

www.oxfam.org

13. Sit on the floor and eat a simple dinner of soup and bread. Talk with your family about the “luxuries” of having a kitchen table and chairs, and adequate food.

14. Pay for the meal of a family in line behind you at McDonald’s. This is great role modeling for your (or anyone else’s) children about random acts of kindness.

15. Suggestions for ways to increase the awareness of poverty issues during National Poverty Awareness Month held in January every year http://www.usccb.org/cchd/focusonpoverty.shtml

16. Rake leaves for an elderly neighbor.

17. Pray for the comfort and safety of our community’s homeless.

18. Talk with your child’s teacher to see if there is a child in need in his/her class and make a donation, asking the teacher to pass the gift along anonymously to that child’s parent(s) (consider a grocery store gift card and/or a gift certificate to a moderate-priced or fast-food restaurant).

19. Join the Fox Cities Project Promise Poverty Coalition and help eliminate poverty in the Fox Cities. Get on the mailing list for updates on meetings, important policies, and more.

20. Host a one-day famine. Collect pledges and donate them to a local organization.

21. Hold a Bake Sale and use the proceeds to buy phone cards for residents at COTS.

22. Plan an ecumenical youth lock-in at your house of worship (see Children’s Activities section for more information).

23. Put a red slip of paper (or some other unusual marker) in every 8^th bulletin at your worship services; at one point in the service, everyone with that marker will be asked to stand while the rest of the congregation remains seated. This provides a visual representation of the 1 in 8 people in the US living in poverty.

24. Talk with your child(ren) about poverty and those less fortunate than you during dinner. Talk about how blessed you are.

25. Organize a community showing or get together with family and/or friends and watch The Pursuit of Happyness or Slum Dog Millionaire. Discuss it afterwards. How did it make you feel? Do you think the movie was realistic?

26. Sponsor a Scavenger Hunt for food in your neighborhood or near your place of worship. Up the ante—assign point values for certain items and winning team gets a prize. Charge an entry fee of 2 non-perishable food items and donate all food to a local food pantry.

27. Write down all of the money you spend each day for a week; then review it. Think about how this list would be different if you were living in poverty? Discuss it with 1-3 other people. How would your lives be different if you suddenly lost ½ of your income?

28. Play www.freerice.com; every time you get a correct answer, grains of rice are donated to some of the world’s hungriest persons. An added benefit: your vocabulary will improve!! Keep track as a faith community how much rice is donated on behalf of members in your community. Demonstrate using graphics for the children!

29. Plan an indoor rummage sale at your house of worship this winter and donate the proceeds to a local charity OR organize a rummage sale for the community, where all items are free. Put up posters around town at sites where people with limited incomes are likely to see them.

30. Eat meatless meals 2 days a week for 3 weeks and donate the money you saved to the charity of your choice.

31. Have your kids, youth group. Scout Troop, or Sunday School class decorate a jar to use as a piggy bank and develop a plan to save money to fill it and decide with them where they would like to donate the cash after 30-60 days.

32. Begin using www.goodsearch.com and donate to the charity of your choice. If your favorite charity is not listed, arrange to have them added. They get 1 cent each time you use that search engine. Track the number of members that start using this search engine.

33. Go to www.thehungersite.com daily and click; sponsors provide 1.1 cups of food to the hungry each time you visit (limit once per day). Again, develop a way to track and display for members in your community to see their impact and motivate them!

34. Put a dot on your wristwatch or cell phone and say a prayer for those in poverty every time you look at it for the next week.

35. Set up a prayer wall at your house of worship; let people write prayers on slips of paper and commit to praying for 1 or more persons’ needs daily for the next month. Kids can do this too!

36. Build a Shanty Village on a chilly day/evening. Each person is only allowed to wear a tee shirt, shorts, socks, and shoes and to bring $5. They can buy articles of clothing for 75 cents each to stay warm and can buy food – but the $5 needs to last 24 hours.

37. Encourage your son or daughter(s) to save their allowances to buy a book of stamps and give it to a single mom or dad in your neighborhood or to Boys & Girls Club or Boys and Girls Brigade.

If you are looking for even more ideas on how to make a difference in our community, please contact the Volunteer Center of East Central Wisconsin at info@volunteercenter.net or call (920) 832-9360.

Please remember to keep track of the difference that your faith community is making by tracking numbers (i.e. - number of people that experienced a Poverty Simulation, number of canned foods collected, etc…) as well as gathering input from your members on the various activities and/or events that they participate in. Taking a few minutes to do these things now will enable us at Project Promise to report back to the community as a whole on the impact that this project had. Thanks in advance for doing this.