To quote Martin Luther King Jr. in Letter from Birmingham Jail, “We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people, but for the appalling silence of the good people.”
We appreciate your support of Episcopal Community Services and our work to end the silence in our community. As you know, our job is to challenge poverty through our programs, partnerships, and advocacy. To do so requires all of us to break the silence that has allowed poverty to thrive in our region for too long.
At ECS, we break the silence by delivering programs such as our nationally recognized Out of School Time program with its STEAM and Social and Emotional offerings to some 800 youth. We break the silence with our leading edge, brain science-based coaching program, MindSet, which empowers individuals with economic mobility and helps create their own path out of poverty. We break the silence with our Community Resource Center in West Philadelphia with our open-choice food pantry; behavioral health, wellness, and housing programs; community incubator spaces; and by working with our other community partners. Our team of 150 employees impacted the lives of some 1,600 individuals last year, and that number continues to grow.
We focus on issues of racial equity, living wages, and the negative impacts caused by the benefits cliff. We also educate and advocate for change with our calls for action and appropriate public policy changes. These changes impact all of us in the region.
We thank the ECS Team and all of our supporters for continuing to persevere through the ongoing challenges that we all know too well. The ECS family also acknowledges the change in our board leadership as we ended this fiscal year. We thank Fred Sutherland for his dedicated service and ongoing support of ECS.
Poverty will consume us as a society unless we deal with it as a society. Your support allows us not only to break the silence, but to take meaningful action that directly impacts the individuals we serve. It is an honor to do this work and to stand with you. We say thank you on behalf of the people we serve.
Learn more about ECS’ mission and values here.
To make a gift to ECS, click here.