St. John’s Lutheran Sunday School raises $660 for The Grind

By Patricia Leboeuf | January 25, 2018
Through a fundraising play and collection, the St. John’s Lutheran Sunday School raised about $660 for The Grind Pembroke. They will continue to collect money throughout the year, having adopted the non-profit as this year’s mission. Showing off their efforts are (back left to right) Sunday School Superintendents Kerry Rabishaw and Sarah Biggs, Pastor Stephen Alles and from The Grind Pembroke are Supervisor Pauline Stuart and Raymond Bimm. In the front (left to right) are Lauren Biggs, Idalee Shalla and Dallas Shalla. (Photo by Patricia Leboeuf, Petawawa Post)

The St. John’s Lutheran Sunday School students are learning the meaning of charity by adopting The Grind Pembroke as this year’s mission recipient.

By performing in a fundraising play and independently collecting funds, the youngsters raised $660. This money was then donated to The Grind to help keep their three-bed emergency homeless shelter running during the coldest months of the year.

“(The Grind) has been doing some wonderful things in the community,” said Sunday School Superintendents Sarah Biggs. “We thought that we could support that.”

The children throughout the year will undertake more fundraising efforts.

Getting kids involved in charitable acts has several benefits. It helps the area, creates more altruistic people and creates a sense of community, but it also promotes the children within the church, noted Biggs. They learn that they have the ability to help and change the world around themselves for the better. It also reminds them that it may not be obvious, but there is homelessness, poverty and other social issues in Renfrew County.

“Particularly in Pembroke, you don’t really see the homelessness,” said Biggs. “It tends to be a bit of an invisible problem. A lot of people are couch surfing.

“It’s good to raise awareness,” she added. “Not just for the children but for us as adults because it is a huge problem in Pembroke.”

This donation will go a long way helping The Grind, said Supervisor Pauline Stuart.

They provide shelter on an on-call basis and the people they serve have different needs - sometimes it’s a place to stay for the night while sometimes they need guidance finding resources to get more long-term help.

“They could have all sorts of issues that bring them in,” said Stuart.

To keep providing much-needed services, The Grind needs support financially and through the efforts of volunteers. They strive to be agents of change in the community through their coffee house, emergency shelter and programs that run throughout the year.

Receiving money from the Sunday School deeply touched them.

“Without them, we’d have nothing,” said Raymond Bimm from The Grind.

For more information on The Grind, please visit thegrindpembroke.ca.