South Central Indiana District Report: March 2026

District Meetings:

• February 3, 2026 – District Meeting Held via Zoom
• April 7, 2026 – Upcoming District Meeting, St Bartholomew, Columbus

Attendance at the February 3rd District Meeting:

• Jim Clerc, President, District
• Teri Mackey, Vice President, Shelby County
• Shirley Boardman, Secretary, District
• Bridget Dolan, Vice President, Bloomington
• Jeana Kapczynski, President, Martinsville
• Shirley Boardman, Secretary, District
• Marilyn Clerc, President, Columbus
• Steve Keucher, Vice President, District
• Edmund McGarrell, President, Brown County
• Deacon Charlie Giesting, Spiritual Advisor
• Steve Goebel, President, Shelby County
• Mandy Stenger, President, Guilford
• Vickie Ernstes, President, North Vernon
• Bernie Lytton, President, Bedford

Indy Council President Nominee:
Information on Tom Adkins was distributed in advance of the meeting.
Comments were solicited on his viability for the position. All comments were positive and identified ways that his experience and philosophy would be complimentary to the role.
>> The consensus of the South Central District is that we endorse Tom Adkins as next President of the SVdP Indianapolis Council.

South Central Indiana District Leadership:
Jim Clerc clarified that he will have served 3 years as District President at the end of September 2026 and requested input on succession planning. He identified various roles the District President provides such as this meeting, representing the District at the Indianapolis Council, being a consultative resource to each of the conferences, staying current on issues relative to the well-being of SVDP and sharing those with the conferences and reviewing/approving the annual reports. Discussion followed whereby a number offered positive comments on the help Jim has provided and that they could rely on his advice and counsel. Several expressed gratitude for his being a listening and supportive leader.

Outreach: Our conference continues to see significant levels of charitable works assistance provided to neighbors-in-need. I n December and January, we provided over 101 hours of Vincentian service (primarily in -person visits) and over 298 miles travelled to provide that service. This service affected 82 family households (133 adults and 13 children) in our community. Our financial support for neighbors-in-need during this period, primarily for rent assistance, utilities, medical/prescriptions totaled over $18,943 with additional in-kind assistance worth over $1481. This is made possible by the generous support of the parish including 5th Sunday collections and the additional funds provided by the Parish.

For Systemic Change, we completed our 6th Round of Changing Lives Forever in our community in late November. We had 12 investigators graduate from this recent round, including two bi-lingual investigators. We held a graduation celebration event on Saturday afternoon, November 22nd and had over sixty (60) people attend. Our next Round of CLF will be in the Fall of 2026. We have deferred our Spanish bi-lingual CLF pending identifying someone who has the skills as an adult education professional along with the language skills.

We had a successful winter coat drive in December, working with Javier from our parish as part of his senior project. We had 23 large bags of coats donated by parishioners and Salvation Army was very appreciative of the parish’s generosity.

For spiritual development, our conference has started reading “Dilexi Te” which is the recent apostolic exhortation by Pope Leo. This was very well received by the conference members and was suggested by Father Jeff Godecker for Vincentians.

We are reopening the store this Monday Feb 2nd, after being closed last week with the snow and wind chill. We are still opening the store four days a week, from three days previously. Our calls have increased, and very thankful for our call takers. We work with many agencies to help our neighbors. We were able to get the Township Trustee to cover the cost of plowing out the drive for someone who needed a propane delivery. Our new manager is working out well.

Those we serve:

Activity Summary:
Donated $1000 to the SVdP National Council’s Disaster Relief Campaign.

We completed a Neighbor Satisfaction Survey. Picked 300 random neighbors and were able to speak with 61 individuals. All responses were favorable and we received some very positive comments such as: “It’s wonderful to have someone to help,” “You are doing an amazing job helping our community,” and ”Your organization has renewed my faith in humanity.”

After 11 years of many miles, we will be looking to replace our 2014 box truck. The cost to maintain it is increasing every year.

We are wrapping up our record keeping for the 2025 St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP) Christmas events. Two events were hosted in Brown County for the benefit of our neighbors in need. Blessing Tree was a joint event with the Salvation Army and served 508 children from 171 families with memorable gifts. More than 400 donors made this possible with 107 volunteers contributing direct service to the program for a total of 1493 hours. Distribution of these gifts took place at the Brown County Presbyterian Fellowship on December 13 with a snow day catchup on December 15th.

Parents and children identified the desired gifts. Suggested amount to spend was $30 and requested items included sports equipment, Stitch toys, hair accessories, Legos, magnetic tiles, gift cards etc. Items were assembled in gift bags and staged at the Salvation Army. Cheryl Orr Dixon (SVDP) and Captain Vinal Lee (Salvation Army) served as co-captains of the event.

The Blessing Grandparents Program was hosted by SVDP at the CYO Camp on December 17. Close to 100 guests and volunteers came together to enjoy hospitality, entertainment, refreshments and gifts. There were 63 grandparent guests and 32 volunteers who provided 155 hours of service. Guests were treated to gifts, entertainment, refreshments, and games. Many expressed their gratitude and a few said they never had attended a Christmas party before. The Salvation Army has expressed interest in collaborating with SVDP in 2026. Staff at the CYO Camp generously helped with the event.

Concurrently, with these special events (and despite weather challenges), we offered 9 food distribution days in December serving 238 households representing 774 adults and 261 children with 16,130 pounds of food. It was a challenging weather month. This compares to November, 2025 when we offered 12 distribution days serving 373 households representing 1228 adults and 298 children with 28,880 pounds of food.

We spent $3,601 on food in December and $13,141 in October and November. Rather than purchasing turkeys and hams for our families, we offered $10 gift cards to Walmart which were restricted for the purchase of meat and produce. This allowed families to take advantage of sales and purchase the kind of meat and produce that their family could best use. SVDP is not offered the benefit of sale prices when making bulk purchases at stores. Total spent for 4th quarter was $16,742 or an average of $5581 per month.

We just received good news that Hoosier Hills Food Bank has approved us for the highest level of food distribution as we are now serving an average of 1100 individuals per month. This will allow us to procure more food from the Food Bank.

Bitter temperatures and a high snow fall has already challenged us in January. We dug out from the last wintry blast and were open again on January 31. We published the photo below to social media telling our families that we were open. Adjustments were made so volunteers and families could be more comfortable given that the temperatures were in the teens.

All Saints Parish conference application has been forwarded to Pam Hudson and added to the National Members Portal. Meetings are being held twice monthly with 46 members currently planning to participate. We have members completing Safeguard training, have completed background checks, and are awaiting the arrival of our badges. We have purchased a phone to begin taking neighbor calls and have posted information regarding our purpose and how to contact us in our monthly parish bulletin. We plan to create a rotating schedule of members willing to carry the phone and respond to messages, with members rotating weekly. We have also discussed how to proceed with creating home visit teams. Flow charts for how our calls will be handled have been created and the leadership team has begun to familiarize themselves with the SERV Ware program. We are also preparing to create a committee to collect community resource information to help us support the neighbors we work with.

We are looking for ways to keep members engaged in the society as we begin our work. Our first home visit is scheduled for this week. Our next meeting is February 10th.

• Assistance report – November – total assistance $19,719.32. Of that total $9,585.90 was for food. 91 households were served with 290 members. December – total assistance $12,987.72. Of that total $2,359.35 was for food. 37 households were served with 119 members.
• Financial report – November 2025 – total receipts $26,749.85, total expenses $20,387.22, net income $6, 362.63. The financial donations from members and non-members were $6370.00 which represented all of the net income for this month. December 2025 – total receipts $25,036.56, total expenses $20,210.98, net income $4,825.58. The financial donations were $6,416.60. A one-time expense for replacement of a damaged door frame and the installation of a key-pad lock was $2320.00.
• Volunteer report – We had a couple of new volunteers. We are planning to host a home visitor training session on Saturday February 21st.
• Food pantry report – The Advent food drive was successful. The pantry is currently well stocked.
• Physical facilities report – The new door frame and keypad lock have been installed.
• Store report – We have implemented a no pennies policy. Purchase totals are rounded up to the nearest nickel and the balance is considered a donation to charity; unless the customer has correct change. We lost a whole week of store income due to the 16+ inches of snow and frigid temperatures. We will likely face a deficit for January.
• Warehouse report – Warehouse volunteers have been working hard and are often donating extra hours to keep up.
• New business – The new printer has been installed in the interview office. We had to replace the toner cartridge and it cost almost as much as the printer itself. Hopefully, it will last a long time.

Assistance – Dec. 1 – Jan.31, 2026, we had 45 calls (11 repeat neighbors) & helped 29 households & 1 homeless individual. We provided rent assistance of $3,800 to 12 households and $1,927 in utility assistance to 8 households. We gave 2 bed sets totaling $978 using our REMC Operation Round-up grant. We now have an arrangement with a local furniture store to order the beds and deliver them locally. Our members deliver the bedding linens.

Outreach – We continue our Sandwich Ministry to Red Barn food pantry with assistance from St. Martin of Tours parishioners. 30 sandwiches are prepared after Mass twice a month & taken to Red Barn to feed the homeless. We also purchase & take food to Red Barn’s pantry.

Changing Lives Forever – 2 members are taking the Facilitator training Jan. 28 & Feb. 4. We hope to get the committee formed again to try to offer this in Morgan County. We have 3 other trained Facilitators. We face a lot of generational poverty in Morgan County

Vision SVDP – Jeana participated in the District’s Vision SVDP process for Membership & Recruitment. The conference members were asked for their input also. St. Martin’s SVDP always has a table at the parish ministry fair and this was described as a recruitment idea. Our members are also encouraged to wear SVDP logo shirts at the ministry fair and when selling Raffle tickets, etc. The parish Knights of Columbus members wear their logo shirts at Mass and their membership is increasing.

We continue to meet by ZOOM on the 2nd & 4th Mondays at 7 pm.

For December/January, we assisted 30 people with food, lodging and utilities for a total expenditure of $3657. We continue to meet on the 4th Thursday of the month.

Sue’s email address is bsfechter@yahoo.com

Shelby County conference December/January stats
142 Neighbors served including:
Client essentials: $479.60
Electricity: $3,881.65
Food pantry: $570.14
Food vouchers: $625
Propane-gas: $682.11
Sewer: $322.10
Water: $773.39
Laundry vouchers: $100
Shower vouchers: $170
Housing assistance: $11,165.95
Twinning: $1500 (got behind on our payments)

Still working on implementing ServWare- using it for all hours and mileage but having difficulty transitioning recording help provided from HubSpot, due to the lack of ServWare workflow functionality and familiarity with HubSpot.

Have approved donation of used furniture to Sunshine House, Inc. when they open their overnight facility, and have communicated our willingness to take referrals from them to help those in transition from homelessness.

Steve commented that the lack of workflow functionality in ServWare is disappointing as it is step back from the environment they currently use.