Community Partners:
- The Harrisburg Catholic Worker House: The Harrisburg Catholic Worker House began in November of 1996, when two men of faith and compassion recognized the need for housing and hospitality for homeless men coming out of prison with drug and alcohol addictions. The Worker House helps these children of God recover from the devastation of drug and alcohol abuse or readjust after being released from prison, in order to regain self-respect. They are offered housing and food, daily prayer services, and a monthly Mass. Guests are encouraged to attend recovery programs, help with local civic beautification, and extend charity to each other and their neighbors. Student volunteers may serve in a number of ways, including meeting and sharing time with house members, stocking and cleaning the food pantry, or working on the urban garden initiative, which involves transforming vacant lots into flourishing gardens that produce flowers and vegetables for the entire neighborhood.
- The Grantham Community Garden:
The Grantham Community Garden is a student-inspired, student-led effort to demonstrate and promote real-life concepts of sustainable agriculture; a necessary dimension of holistic Christian stewardship. We plan to use this garden initiative as a means to educate students, faculty, and the broader community about the benefits of eating organic food and tapping into local farm economies for food resources. Through participation in local and on-campus farmers markets, we hope to foster greater interaction between campus residents, regional farmers, and the surrounding public. Besides utilizing Messiah College’s land resources to produce fresh and healthy cafeteria food, a campus garden would allow the college to keep pace with environmentally minded schools such as Dickinson College, Wilson College, and Eastern University. Volunteer opportunities allow students to contribute to fall harvest and clearn-up and to become involved in special projects.
- The Joshua Farm:
The Joshua Farm is an urban farm located on 18th Street in Harrisburg. It is affiliated with Joshua Group, a non-profit Christian organization that intends to aid at-risk youth and employs underprivileged youth from the surrounding area. The farm grew from a vacant lot to a profuse farm and now sells affordable, locally grown vegetables to families in Allison Hill while providing service, vocational and educational opportunities to at-risk youth in the city. Volunteers will help harvest fruits and vegetables to sell at the farm’s biweekly farm market. They will also help run the farm market and prepare the farm for winter.
- Project SHARE Food Bank: Project SHARE is an interfaith, non-profit cooperative effort created to meet the needs of the hungry by providing supplementary food on a monthly basis. SHARE distributes food boxes in the third week of each month containing 45 nutritious food items, approximately one week's groceries for a family of four. On SHARE's monthly food distribution days, volunteers will serve people who rely on this ministry for food, clothing, and other essentials. Their tasks could include handing out food, restocking shelves, creating nutritional menus or teaching people how to prepare a new recipe using the food they receive. Click here to see a video what Project SHARE is all about!
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