Welcome to One Body DFW

http://www.thestewpot.org

The Stewpot offers a safe haven for homeless and at-risk individuals of Dallas, providing resources for basic survival needs as well as opportunities to start a new life. Established by First Presbyterian Church in 1975, The Stewpot began serving food when church members realized no other resources were available for the homeless and hungry. The Stewpot is currently serving three meals a day, seven days a week to more than 700 people per meal in the Second Chance Café – with the assistance of over 1300 wonderful volunteers a month!

Location: The Bridge is located at 1818 Corsicana Street, Dallas, 75201, just north of Interstate 30 and 2 blocks west of the Farmers Market.  The Bridge parking lot is at the corner of Corsicana and St. Paul

Volunteers are requested to arrive 30 minutes early for orientation and preparation before we serve dinner at 6pm. ALL meal service volunteers MUST be prescheduled to serve, therefore we have registered 15 participants for the above described volunteer opportunity months in advance. With that being said, the first 15 who have committed to help that Saturday can email me, reply on the facebook event, or comment on this website to secure their spot. Volunteers, please wear closed toe shoes and leave purses and other personal items in locked cars.  If you have questions regarding the Stew Pot, please contact Jean Jones at jean.jones@thestewpot.org.

What a great event it turned out to be!  Hundreds of participants along with hundreds of volunteers showed up to enjoy a wonderful day of fun in the sun, supporting the Special Olympics Spring Games in Arlington.  Here’s some pics that captured the highlights of that day.  Special thanks to all those from South Arlington Church of Christ who showed up! Also, great job all you athletes!

Special Olympics of Tx (SOTX) Greater Fort Worth-Area 11

The missionof Special Olympics Texas is to provide year-round sports training and athletic competition in a variety of Olympic-type sports for children and adults with intellectual disabilities, giving them continuing opportunities to develop physical fitness, demonstrate courage, experience joy and participate in the sharing of gifts, skills and friendship with their families, other Special Olympics athletes and the community.

What: Be an athlete chaperone for a day! We will be working to make sure they are where they need to be and to cheer them on during their various sport competitions.

All volunteers are welcome.  If all athlete-assistance positions have been filled by the time you arrive, you will be assigned as a spectator (cheerleader) or water brigade personnel.

Lunch will be provided for all day volunteers and drinking water will be provided at each venue.

Attire: Please dress for comfort and mobility. Wear comfortable shoes – you will be on your feet most of the time.

For security purposes, please make sure to bring a current photo ID with you to the volunteer check-in area and arrive early enough to check in and get to your assigned station for training.

Get ready for an awesome time, giving them all a spirit of encouragement and love. Bring some sunblock, shades and a great attitude!

Come join us for APRIL SHOWERS BRING MAY FLOWERS PARTY for the children at The Family Place Emergency Shelter!  Helping Hands is a social and fundraising auxiliary of The Family Place, the largest family violence service provider in the Dallas area.

Activities:
~ Help children decorate terra cotta pots
~ Help children plant flowers
~ Make ice cream floats

You can help by:
~ PARTICIPATING, and
~ Bringing any of the following items:
- Four to six inch terra cotta pots for decorating (usually available at Walmart)
- Flats of flowers for planting
- Planting soil
- Vanilla ice cream
- Root beer or flavored soda for making floats
- Plastic spoons
- Cups for floats

PLEASE include in your RSVP what you will bring so that we can be sure we have everything we need for the event.

For the safety of the families staying at the Emergency Shelter, the location is confidential. Directions to the Shelter will be emailed to you prior to the event.

Did you know?

• Family violence is an epidemic in our community and our country
• According to the FBI, a woman is beaten in this country every 15 seconds.
• 70% of the children of abused women are also physically abused, and 20% are sexually abused. The majority of abusive men were either abused as children or witnessed their mothers being abused. (WomenKind, Inc.)
• The 2010 the Dallas Homeless Count 5,750 people living on Dallas streets or in shelters, up slightly from the 5,675 counted in 2009. Together women and children make up almost half of the homeless population on Dallas streets at 27% and 20% of the total, respectively in 2010. Domestic abuse/family problems were listed as the reason for homelessness by 27% of the population in 2010 down from 32% in 2009.
• In 2010, The Family Place answered 11,524 hotline and crisis calls, an increase of 53%.
• In 2010, the The Family Place Emergency Shelter Services provided food, short-term housing, counseling and supportive services to 743 women, children and men totaling 28,697 service days.

How to sign up:

1.  Confirm you will attending the event either via Facebook event or send me an email at info@onebodydfw.org.

2.  Again, for the safety of the families staying at the Emergency Shelter, the location is confidential. Directions to the Shelter will be emailed to you prior to the event.

Looking forward to sharing a beautiful and blessed time with the children!

The Soup Mobile was an exciting time to serve, allowing us to gather and to make literally thousand upon thousand of sandwiches.  We are definitely not bologna and mustard sandwich experts as of yet but we managed to do it easily and as with our past events, at an abnormally fast pace.  God apparently built us so!  Enjoy the pics we were able to capture below!

For the  first One Body DFW volunteer event for 2011, we will be partnering up with 2 groups,  Random Acts of Kindess and the Soup Mobile! Random Acts of Kindness is a non profit organization created by a girl who grew up with her well being sometimes quite dependant on the kindness and generosity of complete strangers.  She now wants to provide ways for those of brilliant minds, compassionate hearts, with understanding and ability to do something to improve someone else’s station in life.

The Soupmobile is a mobile SoupKitchen that began feeding the homeless in 2003 based out of Deep Ellum.  Their #1 mission  is feeding the homeless.  Jesus said ‘Feed MY Sheep.’   The SoupMobile is now we serves an amazing 200,000 meals per year, including over 500 meals a day, Monday thru Friday.  We will be scheduled for February 12th from 10:30-1pm.  The goal for them each week is to make more than 1000 sandwiches. The location will be at eXcuses eXtreme cafe in Deep Ellum.

3025 Main Street
Dallas, TX 75226
(214) 741-1111

THE MOST IMPORTANT GIFT IS YOURSELF, AND BRINGING ITEMS IS OPTIONAL. HOWEVER, IF YOU’D LIKE TO CONTRIBUTE PLEASE STATE WHAT YOU’D LIKE TO BRING IN YOUR RSVP TO HELP WITH OUR PLANNING OF THE EVENT.

1 loaf of bread makes 11 sandwiches
16 slice pkgs of lunchmeat, bologna or whatever’s on sale
16 slice pkgs of cheese if you can (if not, just meat is OK)
Mustard
1000 zip top sandwich bags (each sammie in a bag)
2 sets of gloves for each 1 attending

How to sign up:

Click on the link: http://www.meetup.com/randomacts/calendar/16026230/?from=list&offset=0

1.  Give them your name, email and password (right hand side of page)

2.  They will send you a confirmation email

3.  RSVP for upcoming event: Bologna and Cheese Sandwiches for Soupmobile February 12th (make sure you have the correct date!)

Let’s start off the year enriching others lives by blessing others with our time, talents and hearts for God’s glory together.  Hope to see you there!

Operation Care Dallas was an overall successful event which hosted the nation’s largest Christmas party for the homeless at the Dallas Convention Center on Saturday, December 18th. This year, more than 11,000 homeless from shelters across the metroplex and indigent kids and their famillies attended, some lining up outside the Dallas Convention Center at dawn.  At the event, over 3,000 volunteers served in various roles.

Our special guests, including our homeless veterans, received blankets, sleeping bags, coats and shoes, personal care items, a hot meal, gifts, makeovers, haircuts, entertainment and more. Invaluable resources such as job counseling, housing, medical and legal assistance were also available.
Our group unfortunately was not needed for the prep work originally scheduled on Saturday, December 11th, 2010 due to a great volunteer turnout earlier that morning! Praise God!  Some of us were able to return on December 18th, 2010 for the actual Christmas party and assisted with the adults area.  We were able to separate clothing and package them for women adults who may have been without during the Christmas season.  We were blessed by the event to witness God moving within His people and to share it with others.  This allowed us to partake in an event to celebrate Jesus’ birth as well as providing basic necessities to those less fortunate.

As the holiday season is upon us, let us join forces to end  the year on a great note with a service project!

Website: http://operationcaredallas.org/

Mission: To provide for the physical and spiritual needs of the homeless, men, women, and children of Dallas and beyond by facilitating services and sharing the hope of salvation through Jesus Christ.

Event Details: Reuniting the Family: A Christmas to Remember
‘Tis the season’ for sharing the spirit of Christmas. Operation Care International will again host the nation’s largest Christmas party for the homeless at the Dallas Convention Center on Saturday, December 18th with a special recognition of our homeless veterans.

Our goals:  We will be donating our time and services by arranging and preparing goods, decorations and materials for later transportation to the Dallas Convention Center for the Christmas Party. This is an important preparation activity where volunteers will be GREATLY APPRECIATED.

When: December 11th, 2010 1-4pm

Warehouse Location: 3113 Glenfield Ave, Dallas, Tx 75233

We hope that you and many other willing hands are able to join in on this project to help others partake in the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ this holiday season.

Since Ellen was out-of-town during this event, she asked if I could I post a short recap… more than two months later. Memory, don’t fail me now.

One Body DFW, along with other volunteer groups, had the opportunity to help process shoes at the Shoes for Orphan Souls processing warehouse. When the warehouse receives donations, either directly or through shoe drives, events, etc., they are pretty much put into large, unorganized boxes. Our job in processing the shoes was to:

1. Ensure every shoe had its matching pair.
2. Bind the shoes together via rubber band.
3. Provide a special message inside each shoe for its recipient, to let them know how much God loves them and cares about them.
4. Sort shoes first based on gender: male shoes, female shoes, unisex shoes.
5. Finally, load gender-sorted shoes into crates by size, e.g. males shoes size 8, female shoes size 5, etc.

Shoe processing is an important step in the overall process of getting donated shoes onto the feet of those who desperately need them, and Buckner relies on volunteers year-round to help out with the processing.

Despite the mountain of unorganized footwear that stood in front of us, I’m happy to say that our group buckled down and started processing shoes like champs. The Buckner coordinator even remarked that this was the most shoes he had seen processed in a long time. Hooray for teamwork!

Needless to say, the Shoes for Orphan Souls event was a positive experience for all involved, and we look forward to partnering with Buckner again to help out this wonderful cause.

Hello! This is a much belated post to recap June’s Family Gateway Landscaping project. Here are just a few pictures from the day. We spent the morning hours planting flowers in the inner courtyard (see below). What I forgot to capture were the 2 hours we spent trimming and clearing tree branches and brush! You should have seen the number of leaves and branches that were strewn across the lawn and inner courtyard area. Many thanks to AJ for lending his professional tree trimming equipment and skills! We were told that through our volunteer service, we were able to save Family Gateway the money that they usually had to spend to hire a tree trimming service. Despite the scorching weather (105+ degrees), we  were blessed to leave the apartment complex with a fresh new look.