Serving the Community

“Lord, when did we see you hungry and give you food, or thirsty and give you drink?”
“As often as you did it to one of the least of these, you did it unto me. ”
 
Come serve with us!
Our Community Ministry Programs serve the hungry, the unhoused, and the underserved in Palo Alto and neighboring communities. Every week our programs serve more than 300 people. We invite you to become involved and to join one of our volunteer teams today. Come serve with us!
All Saints has stood proudly at the corner of Hamilton and Waverley in Palo Alto for over a hundred years. As a downtown parish, we believe that serving others in our community is a crucial part of living the Gospel.

For more information about volunteer opportunities with Community Ministry Programs, email  outreach <at> asaints.org
 
A brochure describing our community ministry programs is available.

It’s very satisfying to work with our clients and see them get the food items they need to help them through the week.  
--Dick Raiter, Food Closet Volunteer
The Breaking Bread food preparation and serving teams are a great way to help people and spend time with people you like.
-- Emily Warde, Breaking Bread Volunteer
I enjoy meeting guests and working with other parishioners when All Saints hosts Hotel de Zink
 -- David Chu, Hotel de Zink Volunteer
Here we see face to face those who are in need of help, and through Breaking Bread we take action to help in an immediate and concrete fashion.  There is fellowship gained on all sides.
 --Mary Burt Blume, Breaking Bread Volunteer

Group Description More
Rebuilding Together Rebuilding Together Peninsula 2013 More
Food Closet Free Groceries. The InnVision/Urban Ministry Food Closet is located at All Saints’ Episcopal Church and serves more than 200 people every week; entry to the Food Closet is on the Hamilton Street side of the church campus. The Food Closet, open  Mon and Friday 10-3:30, Tues through Thursday 10-2:30 , welcomes donations of food, as well as donations of time to help serve clients. The Food Closet was founded in 1976 by Patsy McAfee, a longtime member of All Saints Church.  More
Thanksgiving Meal InnVision Estelle Chaflin Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner. Volunteers needed to cook turkeys at home, to prepare food at the church on Wednesday, to purchase items from the shopping list, to work in the kitchen, to serve, and to clean up.  There are volunteer needs most every day of Thanksgiving week!  Details below: To RSVP, contact: Eileen Richardson InnVision's Estelle Chaflin Thanksgiving Day Community Dinner email: paloaltothanksgiving@gmail.com       More
Breaking Bread Hot Lunchtime Meals Every Day. Every Thursday and Friday, InnVision’s Breaking Bread Program serves meals for the hungry in our parish hall. All are welcome to share a meal. Teams of volunteers prepare and serve all meals; All Saints has a team that cooks and serves a meal once -- sometimes twice -- per month; the team welcomes more volunteers for this effort. Over 150 individual Breaking Bread meals are served weekly at All Saints. (Meals are served every day of the week, on Thursday and Friday at All Saints.) More
Hotel de Zink Night shelter & meals. All Saints devotes a significant portion of its outreach efforts to Hotel de Zink, a shelter program managed by InnVision and hosted by twelve Bay Area churches each month during the year. All Saints hosts Hotel de Zink in October when 12-18 clients reside in the parish hall during evenings. More
Downtown Streets Team Working from homelssness to independence. Downtown Streets Team (DST) brings businesses, communities, and homeless people together to create and maintain a clean, safe downtown district. Homeless people who participate in the program earn the resources they need to get off the streets. In the program, homeless people have the opportunity to improve their lives in meaningful and lasting ways: they participate in exchange for food vouchers, shelter, and other resources they need to move forward. More
Opportunity Center Day Center and Housing. From roots in our parish in the late 1990s, and with the advocacy of many others in the community, the Opportunity Center of the Midpeninsula became a reality, opening in Palo Alto in the fall of 2006. The Opportunity Center includes a day service center managed by InnVision, along with eighty-eight units of affordable housing. More
Peninsula Interfaith Action An action- and issues-oriented collaboration among many Bay Area churches, PIA exists to address social issues from housing to childcare and beyond. PIA staff collaborated with All Saints and identified the unhoused in Palo Alto as a high priority for us; we formed a committee about this priority with First Presbyterian Church in Palo Alto. We met with community leaders and did further research, which pointed to the need for a local day center to provide a full range of services to homeless men and women. This became The Opportunity Center. More
Global Outreach Programs Millennium Development Goals, Haiti Relief, Nets for Life. In addition to its local outreach efforts, All Saints has embraced the recommendation of the national Episcopal Church and of our local diocese that parishes contribute 0.7 percent of their annual budgets to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). A parish gift was presented to Episcopal Relief and Development in 2008 to support global programs to relieve hunger and poverty.All Saints’ initial donations in furtherance of the Millennium Development Goals were earmarked for El Salvador. More
InnVision InnVision is the umbrella organization for many services and resources for those in need of food, clothing, medical assistance, or shelter in our area.  Many of the services that All Saints works to provide are provided in partnership with InnVision.  All Saints members serve the community through volunteer work in InnVision programs, and through service on InnVision committees and boards.  A list of services in All Saints' part of the Bay Area is online at the InnVision site.  A six-page " More