Belmont Food Collaborative
Belmont Food Collaborative is a not-for-profit volunteer organization in Belmont, Massachusetts. Their mission is promoting good health, access to fresh and local food, nutrition, and local and sustainable farming. Their work includes Belmont Farmers' Market, Belmont Composts!, Community Growing, Food Assistance, Food Education and more. Read the mission statement to learn more. Sponsors and donors are welcome.
Chaplains On The Way
Chaplains on the Way believes that no person experiencing homelessness in Waltham should feel they have to walk alone. We live out our mission by building trusting relations with those experiencing homelessness, living in deep poverty, dealing with mental health or substance use challenges. We offer a ministry of spiritual care, listening, and companionship through life’s struggles and triumphs.
Starting in 2020, and throughout the pandemic, Chaplains on the Way partnered with First Parish in Waltham to provide hot coffee, home-cooked meals, a warm space to rest, and clean bathrooms for people experiencing homelessness. Chaplains on the Way serves over 3,000 hot meals each winter with an average of providing for 25 unhoused people per day.
The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network and Beyond Bond and Legal Defense Fund
The Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network (BIJAN) is a community network of faith communities, individuals and other activist groups working to reduce the escalating harm of our immigration system in the current political context. We work closely with immigration justice and abolitionist organizations to support those impacted by our racist immigration system. As an accompaniment network, we take action only in response to requests from those in need of support, or their representatives (family, attorneys, etc.) We don’t make promises, but we are good at trying very hard.
The Beyond Bond & Legal Defense Fund (the Bond Fund) raises money for immigration bonds to free people in ICE prisons in Massachusetts and Rhode Island or those detained elsewhere who are from or returning to MA.. Since 2018, our community has raised over $1.5 million, to bond out hundreds of people, and helped with legal fees for many others. Learn more about the Fund here. The Beyond Bond & Legal Defense Fund is a separate project incubated by the Boston Immigration Justice Accompaniment Network.
Pink Haven Coalition
Pink Haven Coalition is a collective of organizations and individuals who are committed to trans liberation and joy and to growing community defense, mutual-aid, and alternative systems of care for gender diverse people.
At a time when many places in the United States are seeking to eradicate trans and non-binary people from public life, Pink Haven Coalition is committed to mobilizing justice-lovers who will declare: “Not on my watch!” We have the will, the compassion, the experience, the pluck, and the resources to keep our trans communities and gender expansive beloveds safe. Centering the security of the trans organizers leading this work, we are gathering supporters from a wide array of communities and organizations.
The Grow Clinic at Boston Medical Center
The Grow Clinic for Children is an outpatient subspecialty clinic at Boston Medical Center that started in 1984 to provide comprehensive specialty medical, nutritional, developmental and social services and dietary assistance to children from the Greater Boston area referred with Failure To Thrive (FTT).
First Church supports babies (and their families) facing food insecurity by donating goods to the Boston Medical Center’s Grow Clinic Aunties. Throughout March, we focus on the babies, so please bring PediaSure formula with fiber, baby food (stages 3 & 4), Flintstones chewable vitamins, diapers (sizes 3-6), and unscented baby wipes. Drop-off is at the table next to Gloria, the stuffed giraffe, in the First Church basement.