St. Julian's Episcopal Church

Starting Over is a non-profit organization which serves the Douglas County Community by providing volunteers who serve as supervisors during parent-child meetings. Due to a variety of circumstances, a judge has reviewed the home situation of the children and ordered that they be placed in foster care.. These parents are allowed to visit their children only with an impartial supervisor present. The meetings previously took place in small state facilities, while St. Julian’s provides a cheery, warm environment with caring supervisors. Despite the often tragic circumstances these children face, one constant remains: the children still love their parents. Starting over gives these parents just what its name implies, a chance to start over. Starting over meets on Thursday nights for 1 1/2 hours (6:00-7:30) and Saturday morning for 2 sessions (9:00-10:30 and 10:30-12:00). Volunteer supervisors are briefed on the simple rules for visits and sign up for the times they can serve. All that is required from volunteer supervisors is their time and the desire to help put families back together.

Expected time commitment for volunteers is about 1 1/2 hours on Thursday evening and/or 3 hours on Saturday morning. For more information contact the church office at: 770-949-9949.

Our church along with other community churches is working with local elementary schools to help insure disadvantaged elementary school children do not go hungry over the weekend.  It has been brought to our attention that there are children who are on the free or reduced breakfast and lunch program, and that is their main meal for the day. The counselors at the elementary schools identify children who are at risk and each child receives a backpack of food on Friday to take home for the weekend.

Once a week two volunteers at St. Julian’s pack 12 backpacks with non-perishable items. We put in our weekly announcements what items we need and members of the parish respond with donations. The backpacks are stuffed and delivered by Fridays to the school we are assigned to help. They include 2 breakfast items, 2 lunches, 2 dinners, and snacks. Hopefully, this helps the children and their parents through the week-end. The packs cannot weigh more than 10 pounds, they go home with the children on the buses on Friday and they return them on Monday.

We also realize this is a problem for holidays as well. So during the long breaks at school and long week-ends our church packs larger boxes for the families which have to be picked up. The children and their families are very appreciative. We are also very fortunate that we have parishioners who pick up little extras when they purchase their groceries so this is not a burden at all on any one person. It is a community outreach program.

We continue to need the regular items that we provide on a weekly basis and that you don’t even have to go out of your way to help; just buy a few of the items that we provide (individual packs of oatmeal, cereal, canned pasta, ramen noodles, canned tuna, peanut butter, 100% juice, fruit cups and UHT milk are just some examples) while you are shopping and bring them with you to church on Sunday.  For additional information please contact us at (770) 949-4999.