Winning the 2024 Nonprofit of the Year Award from the Nonprofit Alliance Catholic Development Council is a prestigious validation for Edmundite Missions, a Catholic charity based in Selma, Alabama, that is dedicated to serving the poorest of the poor.
A bigger challenge than distance awaited Evon and Charles Wells-Ellis in their decision to have Evon’s mother, Grace Wells, move into their St. Paul home. Wells, 83, from Omaha, Nebraska, needed wheelchair access and other physical adaptations to live at Wells-Ellis’ Aurora-St. Anthony neighborhood home near St. Peter Claver. The cost of the changes looked daunting at $40,000-$50,000.
The Center for Mission has distributed almost 44,000 Rice Bowls in the archdiocese this year. Last year, 123 local parishes, schools and Catholic institutions participated, and donations totaled $97,713 — $27,000 more than the local Rice Bowl collection in 2012.
At age 19, Jessyca Macklin was homeless and jobless due to a domestic abuse situation. That changed after she started working at Elpis Enterprises, St. Paul nonprofit created to provide job training, work experience and job placement for homeless or precariously-housed young people ages 16-23.
In an area of St. Paul that Father Michael Byron described as “more needy, less Catholic and more diverse” today than it has been in its 65-year history, St. Pascal Baylon School intends not only to remain open, but also to be an anchor of Catholic education in the east metro of the Twin Cities.
Understanding how difficult the economy has been for those less well off, clients of Minnesota’s Catholic Community Foundation this past year used CCF’s financial services to try to help.
