Diocese-wide Christmas service project helps seniors affected by floods

Diocese-wide Christmas service project helps seniors affected by floods

-Students to deliver Christmas cheer, support-

(ALBANY) - Catholic schools from throughout Albany Diocese have a special Christmas service project this year: They have "adopted" residents at the Delhi Senior Housing Complex in Delaware County. Together, Diocesan School Board members and students from 17 Catholic schools have worked together, raising funds to purchase gift cards and other gift items that residents need to help restore their homes and lives, and to reassure them that at this holiest of seasons, they have not been forgotten. The effort is coordinated by Diocesan School Board member Kate Burgess.

A group of students and administrators will deliver items and partake in a Christmas celebration this Friday, December 15 from 10:30-noon at the Delhi Senior Community, located at 7 Main Street in Delhi. Beginning at 8:00 a.m., students and staff will load items for donation into a caravan of cars from the Diocese Pastoral Center, located at 40 North Main Ave., Albany, NY 12203

Delhi is HUD subsized housing for very low-income seniors age 62 and over. The residence was seriously damaged during the June floods, rendering 19 apartments on the first floor uninhabitable. Consequently, the senior citizens who lived in those apartments lost everything. It is a great hardship for these residents to replace the furniture, clothes, and other household necessities that they need because most residents have incomes below $9,000, many with annual incomes below $5,000.

Schools participating in this project include Blessed Sacrament, Christ the King, Holy Cross, Holy Spirit, Notre Dame-Bishop Gibbons School, St. Ambrose, St. Casimir’s Regional School, St. Catherine of Siena, St. Helen’s, St. Madeleine Sophie, St. Mary’s-Ballston Spa, St. John the Evangelist, St. Mary’s-Oneonta, St. Thomas the Apostle, and St. Patrick’s Academy in Catskill.