St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center

St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center is located in the South End of Albany, New York and helps people who are in need. They provide a soup kitchen, food pantry, and a variety of special programs. This organization was started in 1980 and has been growing since. In this day and age, technology has taken over. I believe St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center would benefit greatly from the use of technology. The biggest help I see it accomplishing is keeping everyone connected throughout the city. There are so many people and companies who help out St. John's/St. Ann's and being able to stay connected is a key component that technology could help with.

St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center provide the people of Albany with food, clothing, furniture, and more. In getting to know the Outreach Center better, I think people need to know everything that they do. With the soup kitchen, they make homemade meals every Tuesday and Saturday from 11am-1pm. Anyone is welcome to come and participate. The volunteers there wait on the people who come to eat, allowing this time to be very social for the guests who are there. On average, the Outreach Center serves up to 300 people in this short amount of time. On the days the soup kitchen is not running, Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, St. John's/St. Ann's has a food pantry open from 10am-12pm. People who come pick out food that is to be used over a three day time period for each person. The Capital District is divided into sections and each section has a food pantry for the people living in that section. These people are only allowed to belong to one pantry and have to show ID that is recent, within 30 days, to be able to use the pantry. The Outreach Center does this because they receive money from a grant to provide the people with this food. The grant is called the HPNAP Grant. They receive money every year on July 1, which is supposed to last them until June 30 of the following year. The Outreach Center plans several programs including a furniture program and holiday programs. People in need of furniture fill out a form requesting the furniture and the center gives them what they need if they have it in stock. St. John's/St. Ann's hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas programs, which include a meal as well. During Christmas, each child receives two gifts and every adult is given one gift. Lastly, there is a special program for people who are disabled or sick and cannot make it to the center, but are in desperate need of help. This is called the Home Delivery Program. Volunteers from the center go to the homes of these people and delivery food to them. Everything St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center does has a purpose to better the community they are in.

People outside of the Outreach Center provide a lot of help to St. John's/St. Ann's in a variety of ways. Stewarts and Price Chopper have extra bread in the mornings that are given to the center. Volunteers go over to the store at 6am and pick up what they need. Farmers growing fresh fruit and vegetables also provide their service and harvest to the center. This past hurricane though destroyed most of the farmers' crops, leaving both the Outreach Center and the farmers short of what they need. The Girl Scouts provide something called birthday boxes for St. John's/St. Ann's. These are sometimes used for special events as well. People come in asking if there is anything they can have to celebrate a birthday, and because of the Girl Scouts, they can give them these birthday boxes.

In getting to know what St. John's/St. Ann's does, we can get a better sense of how far the use of technology could go throughout the center. They could use the Internet to publicize their events and get out the word to more people. As mentioned by Professor Harden, the Apple computers that are not being used could be set up at the center for use by not only the volunteers but also the people of the city of Albany. If the businesses that the Outreach Center go to for food and service can connect with the center through the use of technology, I believe this could go a long way in growing deeper roots in the city. More businesses could get involved in helping the center as well. Technology can also help in keeping track of the people who come to the center. They can see how fast their center is growing.

St. John's/St. Ann's Outreach Center is so helpful to people who need food and other necessities. They have a great start in the city of Albany and I believe they are on their way to even more success in the future. Technology can aid in this process and increase their ease of work throughout the center.