Agape Ministries hopes to address homelessness

NEW BREMEN — With inflation rising and the uncertainty of what lies ahead, organizations like Agape Ministries are there to play a philanthropic part.

Patti Hamilton, the executive director of Agape Ministries in St. Marys, spoke to members of the New Bremen-new Knoxville Rotary Club on Tuesday about what the non-profit is doing to help the area.

Agape has operated in the city for more than 40 years and are always looking for donations.

Hamilton, who took over as director in 2018, is grateful to live in a community that cares.

“We have so many different things to offer at Agape from the food pantry to the store,” she said. “So all of your generous donations

from this whole area — we are so grateful and honored we are able to do that for people.”

One of the groups Agape is aiming to help — through partnerships with county agencies and other organizations — is the homeless.

“We have a Housing Homeless Coalition that the county has

started. We don't have that issue in New Bremen, but we do have the issue in Auglaize County. We

have individuals who are living in tents at the state campgrounds. There are people living in tents in

the woods,” she said. “The reason we know that is we have a system that's called point of contact, or point of time. We go out and discover them — we see who they are.”

She said the first time they did it — back in February — they identified 37 people that were located living in tents in different parts of Auglaize.

“In those 37, four of them were children. It is affecting every demographic of people it seems like,” said Hamilton. “From the

elderly to the very young — we’re trying to eliminate that and help them.”

She’s hopeful that the coalition can start something in Auglaize County like how the Hand Up

Village in Celina serves Mercer County. Lord's Abounding Grace Church of Celina joined forces with the Mercer County Homeless Coalition and started the village to help people going through transitional phases in their life. The village offers many amenities to folks trying to straighten out their lives.

“People who are in transitional state want to make a better life and this is a place they can go and get help. They have to seek a job, save part of their money, clean — all tasks that are part of daily living,” she said. “The coalition is looking at investing in something like that. Normally what we do, along with the government agencies that are in- volved with the homelessness, they put them in a hotel.”

But Hamilton said hotels in June and July are mostly full because of companies contracting help from outside the area in these months and that's where they are lodged.

"Those are no longer available in those months to those agencies that want to use them," she said. "This is an alternative they're trying to look for. It's not necessarily a good solution – but it's a start and that's what they're trying to do."

For the pantry, Hamilton said there’s no longer any Covid-related restrictions and they’ve seen an uptick in the number of people that visit.

“We were seeing about 10 to 12 people on Tuesdays and Thursdays and that's now increased to 17 to 25 on each of those days,” she said.

Hamilton said the federal Food Stamp Program funding went back to the amounts before the pandemic, adding that it was almost cut in half for the last two years.

Agape has increased what they offer beyond food-related items, having basic items on hand like laundry detergent, cleaning supplies and other toiletries.

Hamilton said building relationships with other ministries has helped enormously.

"We work with Call Ministries in Celina and Mercy Unlimited in Wapak and we kind of trade when we have an overabundance of items,” she said. “We've got an entire pallet of Tide from Call and we give them meat that we get from Kroger. We try to do that as much as we can so we're able to give those to our clients."

She said Kroger donates around 800 pounds of meat each week to Agape. “It’s unfortunate, but it's fortunate for us and then our clients get it. I think that's why we're seeing an uptick in people because people just can't afford it,” she said.

One of the changes Hamilton implemented after she took over was making sure they weren’t giving away expired food. “While yes, they'll tell you there's a shelf life to things and the expiration date is tomorrow and it's still good for a year — all that could be true — but I shouldn't expect someone that's down on their luck to take it simply because I have to give it,” she said. Another initiative that Hamilton has expanded on at Agape is the recycling efforts. In addition to collecting Nos. 1 and 2 plastic, they also accept Nos. 3, 5 and 7, which many recycling centers won’t accept.

Hamilton said she works closely with Auglaize County Solid Waste Director Scott Cisco on that matter.

“On my premises, we have bins that he allows us to recycle those. He [Cisco] has one person in the state of Ohio that he can take that to,” she said. “He doesn't do it at an unsupervised location because there can be no metal in it at all because it will destroy the equipment. We monitor that and make sure no metal gets in there.”

Glass, plastic, paper and paper bags are gladly accepted also.

Hamilton said Agape was able to receive more grants than ever last year as a non-profit, totaling around $75,000, which has helped in a number of ways.

She said the typical amount used to be around $1015,000.

All in all, Hamilton is glad to serve the area. "It's been 3.5 years. I love this job. It's a job you get to help — it can be frustrating like any job can be — but one of the things we try to do is to help people,” she said. ““We're just trying to do the best we can and help as many people as possible."

Agape accepts donations from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. on Saturdays.