Citizen Katie

Community Involvement and Catholic Social Teaching

Citizen Katie is an annual event that brings together students, faculty, staff, and alumni in collaboration with community efforts.

This year’s Citizen Katie will be a “take-out menu” of community service options for each of us to individually do before the Citizen Katie event — when we will come together to share and celebrate! The 2020 Citizen Katie event will take place October 17, from 11 a.m.–12 p.m. You can participate in one of the opportunities listed below any time before then. Register to get the Zoom event link and let us know what volunteer opportunities you choose.

Our sponsored opportunities are all virtual. You may also have an organization you are already working with that you want to volunteer with for Citizen Katie.

Citizen Katie Sponsored Opportunities (all virtual)

Dress for Success

Join the Dress for Success virtual Twin Cities Marathon team (em)Power Her and take advantage of their racial justice focused educational and action-based opportunities.

651-646-6000
Volunteering@dressforsuccesstwincities.org
1549 University Ave, Suite 100

Keystone Community Services

Participate with Keystone by decorating bags for Meals on Wheels. Use brown paper grocery bags, draw pictures, and/or write encouraging words. Arrange to drop off your bags with Keystone or through Citizen Katie at citizenkatie@stkate.edu.

Keystone Community Services

651-645-0349
info@keystoneservices.org
2000 St. Anthony Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104

Ways to participate:

Decorate the outside of grocery paper bags used to deliver Meals on Wheels. These could be painted and decorated to really add cheer! Meals on Wheels are being delivered weekly now (for limited exposure for our MOW participants) and all the frozen meals get packed into a large paper grocery bag. When decorating the bags, leave space at the top of the bag to write the client's name. Also, if volunteers decorate their own bags, we prefer that they use paper bags with handles.
Write cheerful notes and cards for our Meals on Wheels participants. They are even more isolated this year so having another connection from a caring community volunteer is especially appreciated these days.

NorthPoint Health and Wellness

Write Notes for our Mobile Food Shelf Recipients!

During this time of isolation for so many of our community members, a note from a NorthPoint Volunteer would be a wonderful, uplifting gift for our Mobile Food Shelf recipients. While our staff and volunteers have been seeing 100+ families a day at our Community Food Shelf, we also still have the continued commitment to deliver meals through our Mobile Food Shelf four times a month to people who cannot get to us. NorthPoint will print and distribute your notes to seniors and people with disabilities in the community along with the mobile food shelf delivery and help you spread kindness and hope in a time of uncertainty!

Some ideas for what you can include in your note: words of encouragement, inspirational quotes, recipes, poems, jokes, artwork, or any other creative idea to uplift a Northsider who is isolated now due to the COVID-19 coronavirus!

You must complete a volunteer application with NorthPoint before submitting notes to receive school credit.

*Email Sally Newbury, Volunteer Engagement Coordinator at snewbury@npimn.org and cc- citizenkatie@stkate.edu with your maximum 1-page note (saved as a Word document, 14 point font size please) and I will print it for you on NorthPoint letterhead. Let me know if you want your name included or not (or signed simply with NorthPoint Volunteer).

St. Kate’s Empty Bowls

Participate in St. Kate’s ongoing work addressing food insecurity in partnership with Open Arms of MN. Construct a bowl using food related materials (wrappers, cartons, boxes, other food related packaging) or even food itself, licorice sticks can be woven together, frosting can be used to 'glue' cookies together, etc. Put your thinking caps on and take a look at these examples on the St. Kate's Empty Bowls Project Facebook page! There will be a video demonstration with ideas for construction techniques and tips for taking pictures of your creation to be part of the fall Virtual Soup Socials to be held December 8 from 12– 1 p.m.

St. Kate’s Food Shelf

Contributing personal care products, brown paper grocery bags, and money are always appreciated. We will offer a live chat to explain the roots of food insecurity in our community and a link to 2nd Harvest Heartland’s data on college student food insecurity.

Donations can be made through the Center for Spirituality and Social Justice.

Email: foodshelf@stkate.edu

Suffrage Centennial

Work with the Library of Congress to transcribe Suffragists’ handwritten letters.

Women’s demand for the vote was radical and transforming. The movement questioned the country’s commitment to democracy, highlighted persistent racial and class tensions, and challenged existing domestic relationships. It also affected—for better and worse—the women and families who became involved in the struggle. Few women who began the suffrage struggle before the Civil War, including Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Lucy Stone, lived long enough to witness its final victory, but their work was carried on by the younger women, such as Carrie Chapman Catt, and in some cases their direct descendents, such as Alice Stone Blackwell, whom they inspired and taught.

Many of the personal papers of Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Mary Church Terrell, Carrie Chapman Catt, Anna E. Dickinson, Lucy Stone, and Alice Stone Blackwell are included here, and have never been fully transcribed. Explore the daily lives of these determined leaders and their stories of hope, perseverance, sacrifice, courage, creativity, and conviction, as well as how everyday Americans participated in and reacted to the suffrage movement.

Begin the work