Organizations that Make a Difference
The Martin Luther King Center has a busy active school program for kids, especially the students of School 43.
The Raphael Health Center provides high quality health care that is affordable to all people. Raphael provides mental, medical, and dental health services to many people who are unable to afford this level of care anywhere else.
Gleaners Food Bank provides food directly to those in need, but also provides food to many food pantries and feeding programs throughout Indianapolis.
Bread for the World enables and organizes people to contact their elected leaders to advocate for laws and programs that help the millions who are food insecure. They have special actions that you can take right now to help during the pandemic.
The local National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) chapter is offering online support groups and more.
Gardeners:
Donate fresh garden overflow: deliver your fresh produce to the Boulevard Place Food Pantry directly or contact a member of the beyond-the-walls team to organize a delivery. Let us know approximate weight for our tally for the year!
Crafters:
If you can knit or crochet, School 43 has requested child-sized scarves, hats, ear-warmers and mittens. Crafters can drop off their creations in the Narthex to be delivered by November.
A Handbook of Help for Mental Health
This Handbook is designed to be a time-saver so that all people in the Butler-Tarkington neighborhood and greater Indianapolis area can go to one source for all kinds of help relating to mental health. The Handbook project began a year ago when several Butler-Tarkington Neighborhood Churches (St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Fairview Presbyterian Church, Unitarian Universalist Church, and St. Thomas Aquinas Catholic Church) joined together to sponsor a mental health speaker series for the community. Follow-up dialogue between the neighborhood churches identified the goal to produce this Handbook as a tangible resource that Butler-Tarkington neighborhood churches could share with their respective congregations and communities served.
Find the Handbook here.
Watch Nobody Needs to Know:
https://sites.google.com/site/namiindianapolis/nobody-needs-to-know
Fairview hosted first performance of “Nobody Needs to Know” in May 2022
Fairview Presbyterian Church launched May as National Mental Health Awareness Month by hosting the first performance of the play, “Nobody Needs to Know,” on May 3, 2022 at 7 pm in the Fairview sanctuary that was attended by about 30 people. Presented by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) of Greater Indianapolis and DBSA of Greater Indianapolis and directed by Jon Parker, “Nobody Needs to Know” is a reader’s theater about mental illness and the impact stigma can have on the recovery and healing process.
Presbyterian Second Chance (PSC) - Ghana
Fairview Presbyterian Church has a special and enduring place in its heart for the country and people of Ghana, thousands of miles and oceans away. Over the last 20 years, Fairview member (accomplished educator and writer) Charlotte Anokwa and the Anokwa family have challenged Fairview Presbyterian Church to see how our congregation’s heart, mission, and belief in God can extend far beyond Fairview Presbyterian’s corner of the world at 46th Street and Capitol Avenue in Indianapolis by serving the needs of Presbyterian churches in Ghana.
Charlotte Anokwa (left) with PSC students graduating with their Bibles.
Fairview is currently supporting the small rural villages of Apapam, Asikam, Kyebi, Odumase, Potroase, and Wirenkyiren Amanfrom, in the Akyem Abuakwa district of southern Ghana. With support from Fairview and a large group of Christian volunteers in Ghana, the Presbyterian Church of Ghana supports Sunday schools where adults and children learn to read and write the local language, Twi, as well as in English. The primary objective is to increase literacy in the local language as a stepping-stone towards literacy in English, which is the official language and the medium of instruction in schools. Without English, a child cannot pass any exam for admission into middle and secondary schools. With economic hardships and lack of resources, Sunday schools in most Presbyterian congregations in Ghana have completely died out. In a country where illiteracy is as high as 90% for males and even higher for females, literacy education through the church ensures ability to read and appreciate the Bible and also promotes advancement in the formal educational system.
We installed some donated laptops in three of the villages in 2008 – 2010 which had increases in student numbers. We provided each village with the use of self-instructing educational cassettes or materials to reduce the pressure of finding volunteers for students who are advanced in readability. It is our hope and prayer that the present structure instituted in the villages functions effectively so that we will be able to replicate the model in more villages.
The last 4 years we have published a series of basic reading materials (Books 1- 5 for both English and Twi). The students need to be able to read to graduate from the program because each book comes with testing on their ability to read and use the Bible. Our numbers have around 20-30 students for the villages that are well-established and 10-15 for the villages that are still struggling with getting regular volunteers.
Charlotte and local PSC Volunteers
For the past 3 years, harvesting of rainwater for each PSC site has been added. Our hope is that we will be able to provide one water container per village per year together with drinking cups for the entire school where PSC is located. The first one has been completed at Apapam and we are in the process of getting the second one installed at Odumase. There have been 2 more at Potroase and Asikam with the final one to be installed at Kyebi.
What can you do?
Make direct financial contribution to the Presbyterian Second-Chance Project through Fairview Presbyterian Church. This can be a general contribution, or go toward specific items:
- $5.00 each of very basic easy to read books, available in Ghana. Each book will have a book plate with your name on it.
- $10 - 15.00 each of a Twi or English Bible.
- $65.00 each of a chair for a classroom, available in Ghana.
- $75.00 each of table for a classroom or library, available in Ghana.
- $600.00 for rain catchment plastic container for a school
- $3,000.00 - 5,000.00 for a complete library for a village. Each village is at various stages of trying to build something for themselves.
Donate very basic, easy to read, paperback books.
Tell other congregations about it.
Sponsor its establishment in a congregation you know
Pray for growth and sustainability.