Joining together to do good: Halifax alumni chapter ‘making home’ for the less fortunate

Halifax Daily Bread
StFX alumni volunteers Brian MacDonald (left) and Ken Gillis (right) are pictured here with Brother Grant McLean, who runs the Daily Bread mission.

Back in 2015, when Dan Merzetti ’91 was president of the StFX Halifax alumni chapter, he got a call from someone he didn’t know, fellow X graduate Sr. Jovita MacPherson ’72 ’73, a Sister of St. Martha. She had a mission: “We have a lot of people to help. Can you help?’ was her question.

‘Yes,’ was the resounding response from the Halifax chapter. And over the next four years, until Sr. Jovita returned to StFX as an associate chaplain, about 40 chapter volunteers worked with her and the Sisters of St. Martha on their mission to help the less fortunate in the Halifax area. Indeed, many StFX alumni continued their volunteer efforts even after this. Now, the Halifax chapter is creating a new outreach committee to continue to come together to do something good.  

“While keeping in the spirit of this volunteering, the chapter is looking to revive this by supporting St. Mary’s Cathedral Basilica’s The Daily Bread Outreach Program,” says Allison Randall ’17, the chapter’s current co-president with Megan Thompson ’17.

The Daily Bread continues to provide lunch to those in need, Mondays to Fridays. The program regularly welcomes between 125 and 150 people each day—funding for which comes almost entirely from public donations. The program needs volunteers for both morning and afternoon shifts, and to assist with tasks including welcoming guests; preparing and serving lunches; supply shopping; and sorting donations.

daily bread
Following a StFX alumni event held at BMO offices in Halifax in May, the StFX Alumni Affairs Office donated food to The Daily Bread. Dan Merzetti '91 and Ryan Dunfield ’19 (who is pictured here with Daily Bread volunteers) delivered the food. "StFX continues to build and support the Daily Bread mission in many ways," says Mr. Merzetti.

“Overall, this is an early stage initiative looking to find volunteers to add to the pool of people The Daily Bread can contact to volunteer. We have about four volunteers so far and would love to find more people,” Ms. Randall says.

In the spirit of what was done in the past, Mr. Merzetti says they are recruiting StFX alumni from the chapter as volunteers to work on this chapter outreach committee. “It is meant to be a group of people from X who are helping the church help the disadvantaged,” says Mr. Merzetti, who remembers that Sr. Jovita would always call it “making home,” this spreading of hospitality to those in need.  

It also aligns with the foundational values of StFX and its commitment to social justice and service to society, of coming together to help the community and do something good, he says,

Ms. Randall notes the Halifax chapter initiative is also in keeping with the national mandate of the StFX Alumni Association, under the leadership of president Mike Gillis, which focuses on chapters supporting their local communities through volunteering.

Anyone looking for more information, to volunteer or assist in this initiative is asked to click here to email Mr. Merzetti.


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