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Outreach to Persons in Need
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Consider Being a Part of the Outreach Team!
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About Outreach
St. Austin’s Outreach to Persons in Need (Outreach) ministry strives to offer hope, hospitality, and help through emotional support, financial assistance, and sharing community resources during one-on-one interviews with individuals or households needing help with their rent or utility bills. We offer small amounts of rent or utility assistance via weekly random lottery drawings that are open to anyone living in the City of Austin or who are City of Austin Utilities customers.
Outreach volunteers work with each "guest" we serve to provide hope by helping each guest be in a better place than when we started the interview. That "better place" might be emotional, financial, or better resourced.
Outreach is held on Thursday mornings, with assistance held in person on the 1st and 3rd Thursdays of the month and assistance held remotely on the remaining Thursdays of the month.
Since we value hospitality as part of our ministry, we also have a team of volunteers who return calls to people who reach out to us for assistance but are unable to apply with us remotely or who have questions about our ministry.
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Volunteers Needed!
Our Outreach ministry is currently in need of volunteers to serve via phone or in person at least twice a month. Remote volunteer opportunities are available around your schedule and in-person opportunities are available on the 1st and 3rd Thursday mornings each month.
Volunteers must be able to compassionately respond to people seeking assistance without judging why someone is in financial need. Volunteers also need to be able to respond with kindness and emotional maturity to people from a wide variety of backgrounds, including people experiencing mental health issues or homelessness. EIM/Virtus training is required before beginning. All other training is provided.
Administrative opportunities to support the ministry are also available.
To learn more about our Outreach to Persons in Need ministry or to get involved, contact Kristen.
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July 2023 Persons in Need Collection
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Thank you for your generous support of Outreach through our Persons in Need collection. Your support helps neighbors around Austin keep a roof over their heads and the A/C on during these unusually hot summer months.
Here are a couple notes of gratitude from people we served recently: -
Note from a Travis County Caseworker
Please convey our sincerest appreciation to St. Austin Catholic Church for helping families in need in our community. Needing help with rent & utilities and not knowing how to ask for it, is a barrier for many families in need. It is evident that St. Austin Catholic Church is serving families in need, offering them a way to help make ends meet. On behalf of [guest] and family, “Thank You for your help!, especially during these difficult times. God is good, God bless you!”
Blessings to you and yours,
J., Travis County Family Partner
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Note from a Guest
We are still packing and moving as we have a 7 week old, you can imagine it's a lot. I am already back to work full time and receiving my first paycheck soon so I will be able to take care of the next bill. We just really needed help while I had my unpaid leave to have my preemie miracle. Thank you again for your hard work to help us in our time of need.
With gratitude,
[Guest]
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June 2023Congratulations and a Fond "Farewell" To Kristina Priotto
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After faithfully serving as the Outreach Administrative Assistant for two years, Kristina Priotto graduated in May from UT in Sustainability Studies, Geography, and Plan II. As she moves on to new things, Kristina will remain a St. Austin parishioner and 5:30pm Mass attendee. She's excited to participate in GAP now!
In addition to all of the adminstrative support Kristina faithfully provided, Kristina has blessed our Outreach ministry with her deep care and concern for the people we serve. She's often been a fantastic advocate - even convincing me (Kristen) to drive a check to an apartment complex to help an Outreach guest when the complex was not willing to work with us. Many Outreach guests have been served or gotten the information about our program that they needed in their native Spanish because of Kristina's fluency, and her youthful energy has sparked joy for me countless times.
Post-graduation has already taken Kristina on an academic excavation trip to the Belizean wetlands where she studied environmental change. From mid-June to July, she'll head back, but this time to an archaeological reserve in remote northwestern Belize. This Belizean jungle is the site of a 3,000-year-old Maya settlement.
Kristina shares, "The ancient Maya had genius ways of sustaining their enormous civilizations and withstanding times of drought and other environmental hardships. While many researchers in the area focus on why the Maya collapsed, my professors focus on their resilience and how we can learn from the ancient Maya in terms of resource management in a difficult climate."
She hopes to take another academic trip to Central/South America later in the summer and is job searching when she's in the U.S.
Kristina, we wish you the best in your future endeavors!
~ Kristen and the rest of the Outreach team
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January-March 2023 Outreach Report
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Navigating February's Ice Storm and Its Effects
Through the generosity of many charitable benefactors, the dedicated Outreach volunteer team was able to serve 170 individuals and families with rent or utility assistance in January, February, and March of 2023 - even the week of the ice storm! We provided 87 families with rental assistance and another 9 households with utility assistance through donated funds.
Our Austin Energy Plus 1 Funds grant enabled us to pay off or pay down utility bills for 69 households. It took us an extra week to be able to make Austin Energy pledges from our grant funds during the storm, but everyone we told we would help received the assistance we promised.
*Outreach was held 3 times in January, 3 times in February, and 4 times in March.
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Our Assistance Helped Single Moms Keep Fighting to Beat the Odds
Dantisha is raising her daughter by herself after leaving an abusive relationship and moving to Austin. She just qualified for an affordable apartment that is giving her the chance to leave a lifetime of abuse behind her. Outreach was able to cover her entire utility bill so she can focus on healing and being a role model for her teenage daughter.
Laney is a single mom battling poverty and stigma to give her young child with special needs the best education and opportunities possible. She had to move a second time, quickly, after moving into a place that was bug-infested. She didn't have the money to cover a full month of rent for the place she only lived in for a few days. We were able to cover part of that debt to make the rest more manageable for her. We also gave her some resources and prayed with her. Laney was very grateful to connect with our volunteer who is also a mom and get some encouragement for the long road ahead of her as a parent.
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February’s ice storm had a significant impact on many of the people we encountered through Outreach in the first quarter of 2023. Many people lost the contents of their refridgerators, had to stay with relatives, were stuck in the upper floors of their apartment complexes, or lost work hours as the effects of the storm and the widespread loss of electricity dragged on.
As you can see in the graph below, we had a big dip in the number of requests following the ice storm. (It takes about one week for someone who applies to get their name in the lottery.) This was in part due to a number of people around Austin not having electricity to be able to apply with us, and others delayed reaching out while disconnections were on hold following the storm.In the previous quarter (October through December 2022), we averaged 58 new requests per week from area residents who were eligible for assistance from Outreach. This quarter we averaged 55. We believe this slight decrease is mostly attributable to the effects of the ice storm and that the need for rent and utility assistance in our community remains.
*To be eligible, applicants must live in Travis County or have a City of Austin Utility bill and not have been served by Outreach in the past 6 months. Applicants who live in 78703, 78705, 78722, 78751, or 78756 are served by St. Austin's SVdP - not by our parish Outreach ministry.
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Our Volunteers Provided Some Relief After the Ice Storm
Tomas is from Central America. Casa Marianella helped him get settled in Austin, and now he has a job that usually pays the bills. His nephew came to live with him just before the ice storm reduced his hours. Our rental assistance helped him bridge the gap until he could work enough hours to cover his bills.
Eden's rent went up and she lost her utility subsidy. She didn't realize until too late that she had to pay her electric bill and got disconnected a few months ago. Then she became disabled but her disability application was denied, so she had not income and no way to pay her debt. She was getting by without electricity until her annual housing subsidy inspection was around the corner. If she didn't get her electricity reconnected, she would lose her housing. (Eden got lucky that the ice storm delayed the inspection long enough to connect with us!) Outreach partnered with several SVDP conferences to pay down her large bill and get Eden's electricity turned back on.
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The cost of rent in Austin rose an average of $300 per unit compared to last year, and Outreach was pleased to continue to serve families with $300 per household in rental assistance. We offered roughly $200 to $300 per household for Austin Energy assistance from grant funds as well as up to $300 per household in utility assistance when it came from donated funds. We are grateful we had the funds to maintain sizable assistance amounts per family since so many of our guests were struggling even before the ice storm set them back further.
Outreach served eight guests this quarter in-person at St. Austin’s Ministry Center. The ice storm prevented us from offering any in-person assistance on two of the Thursdays we were open this quarter. We continue to offer in-person assistance appointments as often as possible to guests who live near St. Austin.
The guests served by our Outreach ministry - in person and over the phone - appreciate the generous donations from parishioners that support this ministry. Thank you!
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