The Guardian Shelter for Battered Families, a program of Catholic Charities Inc., would like to take this opportunity to say thank you to local organizations that recently donated time, energy, money and goods for our shelter program.

The Guardian Shelter is a 24-hour operation that provides safe shelter and needed services to women and children of domestic violence in nine counties of southwest Mississippi.

We also have a secondary housing program to assist families who are able to transition into their own safe housing once they are safely able to leave our facility.

Earlier this year, the local Natchez Association of Letter Carriers and U.S. Postal Service allowed us to be a receiver of their food drive, and we were once again blessed to be able to have a large amount of canned goods for our consumers and to be able to have our pantry filled for the coming months.

This program allows us to prepare three hot meals each day for our consumers as well as assist our second stage housing consumers with canned goods in the event they have a food crisis while in their own homes.

We would also like to acknowledge the classes of the 1970s who celebrated their annual reunion this summer here in Natchez.

The event was a weekend of fun and fellowship. The event was hosted at the beautiful Vue Hotel in Natchez, and I understand everyone had a wonderful weekend.

Matilda Stephens was the contact person for the event, and their classes made a monetary donation to our program, as well as two other local programs from their raffles and silent auctions.

We want to express our sincere gratitude to Stephens for including our shelter program as a recipient of the monetary donation.

She continues to be an active crusader for those in our community who are in life situations that need our support and safety.

The large number of classmates who participated in this event is to be commended as well for their willingness to share their time and resources to the community programs of Adams County.

Lastly, I would like to take this opportunity to announce to the community that our annual Ballet Magnificat! will be presented on Nov. 16. This year’s performance will be titled, “Most incredible Christmas.”

This is one of our major fundraising efforts to raise money for our shelter operation.

We will have more details on the ballet in the coming weeks.

We hope to see you all there. I thank each of you in our community who continue to support our work and our activities as we strive to provide the needed service of safe shelter to the victims of domestic violence.

 

Donna Miller is the program director of The Guardian Shelter.