One of the core values of Our Saviour is a focus on helping others. We are committed to helping locally within Croton and surrounding communities, nationally, and globally. Every group we support is part of our mission and our values. We carefully review all groups each year, while looking for other ways we can help, either financially or through our activity in the community.
Croton Caring and Our Saviour Lutheran Church Partner to Fight Food Insecurity
March 23, 2023
Croton Caring and Our Saviour Lutheran Church are pleased to announce a new partnership that will allow them to combat food insecurity in Croton by relocating Croton Caring’s food-program headquarters to the Church.
Among its many needs-based programs, Croton Caring’s Food Basket Program distributes four to six boxes of food to containing much-needed perishables and non-perishables (milk, butter, bagels, bread, eggs, meat, etc.) to each family four times each year to coincide with school holidays. Most recently, Croton Caring’s December Food Baskets provided 265 boxes of food to 62 households comprising more than 254 Croton residents (and more than 130 children).
“While Croton Caring has always provided programs addressing food insecurity in our community and dramatically increased its efforts since COVID when need exploded, our efforts, while significant, have been constrained by a lack of space,” said Nancy Squire, Croton Caring President. “We are extremely thankful to Pastor Justin Johnson, the Church Council and the entire Our Saviour Lutheran community for their generosity and support as this new space provides us with the opportunity to double our capacity.”
“Our community is continually looking for ways further our mission to offer spiritual grounding and growth by connecting with God and our community,” said Pastor Justin Johnson. “This is a wonderful way to celebrate our 90th year in Croton and we are excited about this partnership and look forward to working together to help meet the needs of our Village community.”
Croton Caring’s next round of food baskets, and the first conducted from the new space, will be delivered on April 2, just in time for the upcoming spring school holiday.
Local Groups
Locally, we offer our building space to recovery groups, hosting AA on Tuesday and Saturday nights and NA on Wednesday evenings. We are a polling site on election day and during the primaries. We welcome other groups who fit our mission and values to also use our building regularly.
Other local groups we support financially are:
- Croton Caring
- Croton-Cortlandt Food Pantry
- Ossining IFCA
- Ossining Women’s Shelter
- Padres Hispanos in Ossining
- Pinecrest Camp
Lutheran World Relief
We provide many types of support to Lutheran World Relief to help people in need throughout the world. During 2022 we contributed $14,698 for aid to Ukraine as well as support for other LWR programs.
Each week, a group of crafters comes together to create quilts, school bags, face masks, and items for baby care kits. These items are created to be distributed through Lutheran World Relief, which focuses on getting people around the world help when they most need it. We try to follow this schedule annually:
- Baby care kits at Christmas time
- Quilts and health care kits are made throughout the year, but are on display and distributed in the spring.
- School bags at the end of summer
We highlight our work to help others with annual events including:
- On August 28, 2022 we blessed the quilts and kits we have made during the past year for Lutheran World Relief to be distributed to those in need around the world. Our gifts included:
60 quilts
60 personal care kits
45 school bags
24 fabric bundles
14 baby care kits
- On September 12, 2021 we were delighted to join with over 9100 ELCA congregations participating in “God’s work. Our hands.” Sunday. During our worship service, we blessed 38 quilts, 22 baby care kits, 140 health care kits, and 46 school kits completed throughout the previous year for Lutheran World Relief. We also collected and donated 224 pounds of rice and 159 cans of beans to Padres Hispanos in Ossining and members wrote letters to Congress advocating for food security, housing, and protecting the environment.
Other Groups
We also support Lutheran Social Services of NY, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, and its Metropolitan NY Synod. Every Christmas, we support Seafarers International House by creating Christmas-at-Sea gift satchels. We also do a letter writing campaign for Bread for the World, a group dedicated to helping those who need food.