Backpacks of Love
Contact: Marty McPherson
Backpacks of Love continues to serve the increasing need of food insecure children in North Fulton and South Forsyth counties. In the region served by the Atlanta Food Bank, 1 in 5 children go to bed hungry. The USDA defines food insecurity as a lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Backpacks of Love attempts to alleviate food insecurity for local elementary, middle, and high school children. In the school year ending May 2024, we served / “gave a hand up” to an average of 215 students, for a total of 3,758 backpacks. In the current school year, we served an average of around two hundred families from September to December, delivering around two hundred bags biweekly. With our longstanding commitment to outreach, St. Aidan’s joins with four sister churches in this ministry: Episcopal Church of the Holy Spirit, Johns Creek Baptist Church, Alpharetta Methodist Church, and Zion Missionary Baptist Church. Each congregation provides food and financial support to the ministry. Two schools that are recipients of Backpacks of Love hosted food drives, including Taylor Road Middle School and Midway Elementary School. In February 2024, North Fulton Schools hosted a Super Bowl Can-A-Thon Challenge. Additionally, Larkspur neighborhood and Wyndam neighborhood hosted food drives this fall.
In addition to the food donations, the program currently spends an average of $1,000.00 per delivery, and some weeks, depending on food donations, BOL has spent up to $2,000.00 to meet delivery needs. Our usual shopping in preparation for each delivery consists of seventeen cases of several types of canned foods (for example seventeen cases of soup, seventeen cases of peanut butter, etc.). Our current monthly rent for our warehouse space (aka the Backpacks of Love World Headquarters) is $430 a month.
Find us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/backpacksoflove.
Meal Train
Contact: Janice Howard
Meals are provided to our parishioners when they are in the midst of healing. We have a team that delivers meals during these times of need.
Community of Hope (Pastoral Care Givers)
Contact: Kathy Bump
Community of Hope equips lay people to serve in all forms of pastoral care. Pastoral care is when a person is being “present” in a listening, compassionate, non-controlling manner to an individual or group for the purpose of consciously or unconsciously representing God to them and seeking to respond to their spiritual needs. We are a listening presence.
Through ongoing, spiritual formation and practical lessons on care giving, members learn to match theological insights and spiritual practices with their experiences of ministering to others and giving spiritual guidance.
A little history…In 1994, Rev. Helen Appelberg, Assistant Director of Pastoral Care at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston, Texas, was appointed to create a training course for people to become lay chaplains. With support from staff chaplains and advice from Esther de Waal, an authority on Benedictine spirituality, a twelve-week curriculum was established. Rooted in the ageless principles of The Rule of Benedict and sustained by clinical pastoral practices, the Community of Hope was born.
If you would like to be trained to give pastoral care, or if you are in need of pastoral care, please contact Kathy Bump at the link above. We are here for you.
Mission and Vision
Mission: Creating communities, steeped in Benedictine Spirituality, to serve others through compassionate listening.
Vision: To be a listening presence.
Benedictine Spirituality
When St. Benedict of Nursia wrote a Rule for the monks of his monastery in sixth century Italy, he was trying to encourage those who would seek God together in community. T\ The Community of Hope International was founded to form praying communities, encouraging each other in love, to be a nonjudgmental listening presence to those we encounter on a daily basis. The spirituality of St. Benedict, reflected in the wisdom of his Rule, lights our way
North Fulton Community Charities—one of St. Aidan’s Community Partners
Founded in 1983, NFCC offers programs and services that help prevent hunger and homelessness in North Fulton and create pathways to a stronger future for close to 10,000 residents each year. North Fulton Community Charities assists residents living in North Fulton serving the cities of Alpharetta, Johns Creek, Milton, Mountain Park and Roswell with short-term emergency needs. NFCC collaborates with many local providers to provide the resources necessary to help individuals and families remain stable in our community. NFCC provides services in English and Spanish. NFCC provides assistance in five program areas including Case Management/Financial Assistance, Food Pantry, Clothing Assistance, Education and Workforce Development, and Seasonal Assistance programs at its two facilities in Roswell, Georgia.
The picture is one of our backpack stuffing party for NFCC that we did Sunday, July 20th, 2025!
In addition, NFCC offers utility assistance, transportation assistance, tax filing assistance and onsite childcare.
Check out their website to learn more about ways to volunteer: www.nfcchelp.org. You can also call the church office to learn more: (770) 521-0207.
Keystone Village
Here’s an opportunity to support one of our own parishioners, Beth Burns, co-founder of Keystone Village, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization whose mission is to develop a residential community in Forsyth County that serves intellectually and developmentally disabled adults for a lifetime.
More information about Keystone Village can be found at: Keystone Village
Episcopal Relief & Development
Contact: Mary Kathryn Nix
Episopal Relief and Development facilitates healthier, more fulfilling lives in communities struggling with poverty, hunger, disasters and disease. In addition, they offer resources and training to help communities prepare for disaster and provide emergency support so that they can make a full and sustained recovery.
F.A.C.E-Fundraising and Community Engagement of St Aidan’s
FACE is a group of parishioners who work with the church to get more visible in the community, raise funds for our nonprofit friends and to find ways to serve the community around us better.
One of our annual traditions is a church Yard Sale that is open to anyone. The Yard Sale comes with bargains for shoppers, and food and a bake sale for the hungry! Stay tuned for more information about our plans!
