Community UCC has traditionally supported one church-wide mission offering in the spring and another one in the fall. The fall offering, Neighbors in Need (NIN), will be collected October 5.
Neighbors in Need is a UCC mission offering that targets needs near to home by supporting ministries of justice and compassion in the United States. One-third of NIN funds support the Council for American Indian Ministry(CAIM). Two-thirds of the offering is used by the UCC's Justice and Witness Ministries(JWM) to support a variety of justice initiatives, advocacy efforts, and direct service projects through grants.
Neighbors in Need grants are awarded to churches and organizations doing justice work in their communities. These grants fund projects whose work ranges from direct service to community organizing and advocacy to address systemic injustice. And here are just a three examples of grant recipients:
- Mano en Mano is the “go-to” agency in Downeast Maine for Latino/Latina, immigrant, and farmworker issues.
- San Francisco Night Ministry has a mission is to provide middle-of-the-night compassionate non-judgmental pastoral care, counseling, referral and crisis intervention to anyone in any kind of distress every night of the year.
- Workers Interfaith Network (WIN) of Tennessee is a humble, yet powerful group of people who assists workers protect their rights as employees from exploitative employers.
You can find more at the UCC website: http://www.ucc.org/nin/stories.html
Neighbors in Need helps make another world possible. It needs your support. Please give generously.