CHAPIN WE CARE CENTER

Chapin We Care Center seeks to support clients in crisis, meeting needs for emergency assistance with food and utility payments, as well as ongoing support for clients who need continual help. Our intention is to provide monthly access to a generous food allotment of perishable and non-perishable food, as well as household needs such as paper products, personal items and cleaning supplies. We also provide assistance with utility payments once per every rolling twelve months, as well as bimonthly kerosene vouchers and monthly gasoline vouchers as available. We provide for household needs through several local thrift stores. We strive to address clients' overall health as well and work with Good Samaritan Clinic and offer education information on nutrition, job training, etc. We also are hosting tax clinics, benefits clinics, and pet care clinics!

We Care operates a high volume food pantry, serving hundreds of clients monthly. Food is rescued from local grocery stores and restaurants. We provide non-perishable and perishable food. We also provide non-food items such as cleaning supplies, paper products and personal items. These items cannot be purchased with food stamp assistance, so they are particularly helpful to our clients. We also pay utility bills as needed, writing vouchers as well for kerosene and gasoline, as well as thrift store vouchers for household needs. We provide nutrition education and monthly job training classes. We work with Good Samaritan Clinic to serve their patients and we provide free books to every child whose parents are served. We also provide special programming for Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and summer camp programs. We are also offering free tax clinics and benefits clinics as well and have recently begun to host regular pet care clinics. This year, we are delighted to begin to offer scholarships for academic and training programs for our clients and their children!

We Care enjoys support from the broad community in Chapin. We have over 30 sponsoring churches, as well as participation in food drives by all local schools, businesses, civic groups, boy scouts, the postal service, other groups and individuals. We are able to rescue food from local grocery stores every day of the week, as well as receiving regularly from local restaurants as well. We maintain a partnership with Harvest Hope Food Bank that allows us to receive USDA food, as well as the ability to purchase food at deep discounts. We administer several supplemental feeding programs for diabetics and senior citizens through Harvest Hope that provides additional food on a monthly basis. Our support is varied, providing stability to our programming and ability to meet our clients' needs. Our facility allows for operation of a high volume food pantry, distributing over $1.2 million worth of food in 2019! We also disbursed over $95,000 in utility assistance. This is only possible through our strong relationships with all of our partner organizations.

Chapin We Care Center is delighted to announce our selection of one of the SC Secretary of State's Angels for 2017!

The Angel Award honors agencies with the highest levels of sound stewardship principles and practice. We Care is the only Midlands agency to have been selected in 2017, having reported a client expense ratio of 93.4%. We are thrilled by the acknowledgment of our broad community support that allows us to maintain low overhead and high outreach to those in need. Since receiving this award, we have maintained at least 90% of every dollar going directly to client services.

We Care Center provides food assistance, utility assistance, vouchers for fuel for doctor appointments, vouchers for kerosene fuel, and vouchers to the St. Francis and Good Works thrift stores for furniture, appliances, clothing and other household items. We host the weekly Good Samaritan Medical Clinic, and continued to expand our hours in order to better meet the needs of our clients by mirroring the clinic hours. We Care also sponsors holiday events providing Easter baskets, Thanksgiving baskets, and Christmas gifts for children and families. We also send clients' children to summer camp every year.

We Care cares about our clients' overall health, so we have extensive nutrition education available. Job training is available, as well as special events such as free tax clinics, free benefits clinics and even pet care clinics! We maintain a computer lab for client use to pursue job and government applications as well as government benefits. We also have a children's reading room that our clients to receive a book at every visit.

We are thrilled to begin 2020 by offering academic and training program scholarships for our clients and their children!

As a partner agency with the United Way, We Care is able to offer additional resources. We are also grateful to also be a partner agency with Harvest Hope Food Bank and through that partnership, we administer several grants benefitting both senior citizens and diabetic patients.