Outreach programs within the parish include the following:
- Visitations of the Sick
- Household Assistance
- Parish Contact Group
- St Vincent De Paul Society
- Youth of the Streets
Visitations of the Sick
Pastoral care for the sick and vulnerable is at the heart of our Christian vocation and those who are sick are encouraged to receive the sacraments, to ask for prayers and to receive support.
Each 1st Friday of the month, our Parish clergy will visit all those unable to attend Mass who are housebound or hospitalised due to illness. These home visits will take place after the 9:00am Mass.
Please contact the Parish office if you wish to schedule a rostered visit.
Household Assistance
In isolation, there may be incidental household needs that we can help you with. The Parish is ready to assist parishioners in need of assistance and support during difficult times. We are here for you.
Some things we have been able to help with:
- post letters or small parcels;
- pick up some groceries and/or medicines;
- cook a plate and drop it at your home;
- or ... please let us know how we might be able to help you.
For assistance, please discuss your needs with our staff within the Parish office by email or telephone at (02) 9144 2702.
Parish Contact Group
Contact - Can we call you? The Parish bible study group members would like to walk the talk.
If you are lonely or sick, housebound or elderly, or would just like to talk with someone, our friendly bible study group members are ready to make contact and would like to give you a call.
Please contact the Parish office and we will get in touch with you.
Sacred Heart Pymble Bible Study Group
St Vincent De Paul Society
The St Vincent de Paul Society was founded by 20 year old student Frederic Ozanam in Paris in 1833. It was established by like minded individuals who wanted to put their faith into action. St Vincent de Paul is the patron saint of Christian charity.
The Society arrived in Australia in March 1854 and has more than 60,000 members and volunteers who work to assist people in need and combat social injustice across Australia. Internationally, the Society operates in 140 countries and has over 800,000 members.
Members of the Society are passionate about helping those in need in their local community and work together in groups known as 'Conferences'. The Pymble Conference has been in existence for many years.
Local activity includes:
- Home visitations to clients seeking help such as provision of food vouchers and assessments. Home visitations are always conducted in pairs. All members new to the home visitation program would always be accompanied by a Member well versed in the procedure.
- Nursing home visitations for an hour or so each month or more regularly, to residents of Lourdes Nursing Home and Southern Cross Nursing Home to sit with residents and have a chat. These people might otherwise have no visitors to converse with.
- Glebe/Pyrmont area outreach on Saturday mornings to service in much the same manner as local Pymble residents requesting assistance. The Glebe outreach, which is conducted in conjunction with the Glebe St Vincent de Paul Conference, has been active for many years and in the past, more than 16 members from Pymble have provided assistance on a rostered basis.
- Compeer Program. Compeer volunteers are adults who aim to improve the quality of life and self-esteem of people with mental illness through the power of friendship. Matching of a Conference member and the friend they meet weekly or monthly for a chat and a cup of coffee with a view to getting to know each other and building in time a friendship to make a difference. Volunteers and friends are matched by the program and the benefits flowing from the program are self-evident to those participating.
- Financial assistance to India and Fiji. Our Conference provides regular donations of modest amounts to St Vincent de Paul Conferences in India and Fiji. It is amazing how small quarterly payments are put to good use by these Conferences with which we are twinned. There is regular correspondence between our Conference and the Twin and in fact we have a Twinning Officer.
We call upon the generosity of our parishioners to provide an hour or so of their time to service one or other of the functions of the Conference in providing comfort as well as material assistance to those less deprived or living in situations which are less than ideal.
Our current members along with those who have served as Conference members over the years, can vouch for the personal satisfaction experienced by each and every one of them in being able to devote a little of their time towards those less fortunate.
Our Conference meets at 7:30pm on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month in the Pymble Family Centre which is at the rear of the Presbytery in a separate demountable facility. Meetings (an hour or less) commence with a New Testament reading, generally from the readings of the mass the following Sunday, the presentation of minutes from the previous meeting, and a review the activities of the Conference in the previous two weeks and planning for the immediate future. Prayers are said at the beginning and close of each meeting on a card emphasising the mission of the Society.
Please contact the parish office for further information on the work of the Society in the parish.
www.vinnies.org.au
Youth off the Streets
Since the mid 1990s, the Pymble Parish community has been delivering homemade frozen meals to the Youth Off The Streets program started by Father Chris Riley. The Youth Off The Streets program started in 1991 and is based in Alexandria. In addition to Fr Chris Riley, Founder and Executive Director, key staff include Anne Fitzgerald as Chairperson and Nadine (Lex) Lutherborrow as CEO.
An addendum to the Youth Off The Streets program is a Food Van which departs from the Youth Off The Streets centre in Marrickville and provides meals to homeless people in Green Park Darlinghurst. The Pymble Parish meals are used in both the crisis accommodation facility at Marrickville and in the Food Van at the discretion of the project operators.
The Pymble Parish program the largest of a small group of these supporters for the Youth Off The Streets program. Meals are collected on the morning of the third Friday of the month and delivered to Marrickville on the same day.
The Youth Off The Streets program also receives commercial food donations from various sources.
The Pymble Parish project includes the following elements:
- Volunteers who provide food and prepare home cooked frozen meals and deliver them to the Parish Office on a monthly basis. Meals are dropped at the Parish office between 9am and 10am on each third Friday of the month, February to December. There is no collection in January.
- Volunteers who transport the frozen meals from the Parish office to the Youth Off The Streets facility in Marrickville.
The project is always ready to accept additional home cooked frozen meals and volunteers to transport meals.
For further information, please contact the Parish office.
www.youthoffthestreets.com.au