An exciting new relationship has been born recently in the local Christian community. The Saint Vincent de Paul (SVdP)-Tyrone and the Palmetto Baptist Church Food Pantry forged a new relationship. The common cause the two champion is helping the poor in our community.

The Palmetto Baptist Food Pantry assists about 150 families each month. They receive manpower and funds from three area churches. They also get canned goods from various food drives at schools and civic clubs. In addition, they purchase food from the Atlanta Community Food Bank and receive dated bread from two Kroger stores.

The Saint Vincent de Paul Society is a worldwide lay organization of Catholic men and women. The society strives to equip individuals experiencing a time of hardship with financial assistance, education and confidence to get back to a point of self-sufficiency. There is a Tyrone based conference of the SVdP Society that operates out of St. Matthew Catholic Church located on Kirkley Road. This conference helps many individuals and families in the Tyrone, Union City, Fairburn and Palmetto areas. A common need of many of these families, in crisis, is providing food for themselves and their families.

To better serve these families the Tyrone conference reached out to the local Christian community for assistance. SVdP members, Herschel Coker and Jackie Stahler learned of the Palmetto Baptist Food Pantry which operates every Wednesday from 5:30 p.m. -7 p.m. The food pantry is located at the church on Center Ave. in downtown Palmetto. Herschel and Jackie met with Pastor Orr and Reverend Chris Gould of the Palmetto Baptist Church in October of 2006. They struck up a plan to work together to help those in need in the South Fulton area.

The Parish of St. Matthew holds periodic food drives and deliver the goods to the Palmetto Baptist food pantry. In return, if the SVdP conference is visiting a family in the South Fulton area they have the ability to leave a Palmetto Baptist food voucher with the family. SVdP delivered 3000 pounds of food to Palmetto Baptist in February.

These two entities (SVdP and Palmetto Baptist food pantry) standing separately do great work to help the poor and marginalized in our area. They go a step further by setting aside traditional tensions between the religions and work hand in hand toward their common cause.

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