What A Wining Team!

Hard to believe it, but another year has passed and it’s time to distribute backpacks again! A lot of hard work goes into the preparation, and this year we had an outstanding group of volunteers who stuffed almost 3,000 backpacks with school supplies in three hours! Many of these passonate volunteers traveled long miles from our north country to give us a helping hand. Thank you so much, each and everyone of you for making room in your busy schedules to help us. So many children will be blessed this year. Our fist delivery will be Wednesday, August 27th in Rome, NY. Mayor Jim Brown along with Council Member Tom Varanno will take delivery of 500 backpacks, each filled with school supplies. Mayor Brown and his team will deliver the backpacks to some of the Rome schools before classes begin. On Friday, August 29th, 2,250 backpacks will be delivered to the nine Utica inner-city elementary schools. Our first stop will be the Albany School, where a press conference will be held. The teachers will determine during the first week of classes which children have a need and will distribute the backpacks to them. Oh, and did I mention, we will also leave boxes filled with school supplies at each school for the children to be used throughout the school year. Did you know that teachers spend on average over $150 a year out of their own pockets on school supplies to ensure their students have the necessary supplies throughout the school year? Now that is love and devotion at its best! We so love to help our teachers – to come along side of them – to help them shape and mold the future doctors, lawyers, politicians, pastors, missionaries and so on of our great City and surrounding areas. And the news even gets better, we (Compassion Coalition) partnered with MVCC, and the college president donated two 2-year scholarships to the Utica School District. Awesome! The schools will run a contest and the top two winners from the 6th grade will be awarded a scholarship as the top prizes! Is God good or what – crazy!  The Bibles says in Deut. 15:7-8: ”If there are poor among you, in the land the Lord your God is giving you, do not be selfish or greedy toward them (don’t harden your heart towards them). But give freely to them, and freely lend them whatever they need.”  The Bible also says in Proverbs 19:17: “He who is kind to the poor lends to the LORD, and he will reward him for what he has done.” I, Charlie, am so excited to be the Executive Director of Compassion Coalition, Inc. The backpack give-a-way is just one of the many ways we reach out to our community. Check out our website at www.compassion-coalition.org to see the many other ways we reach out to thousands of people and how YOU can also be part of helping us accomplish all our goals! It was the vision of our Senior Pastor, Mike Servello over eight years ago to see a “Joseph’s Storehouse” established in our great City of Utica to help the helpless! And today – it is a reality! Someone said this, “If there be any truer measure of a man than by what he does, it must be by what he gives.” Now there’s a mouth full. We give God the glory and all the thanks for the great work He has accomplished through Compassion Coalition – and the many more accomplishments He has in store for us. Until next time – May God Richly Bless You!  Charlie & Sher