The Holy Spirit Shop4Me Program supports our health care workers (HCW) during this difficult time of pandemic.  HCW (clerks, orderlies, paramedics, EMTs, nursing assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners, physician assistants and doctors) are on the front lines in the war against this pandemic. Every day they step into harm’s way to fight this virus, knowing that they risk exposure themselves, and exposing their families.

The Shop4Me program is being organized to support these critical workers as best we can during the pandemic crisis threatening our families and community.  With many of our HCW’s being asked to work longer shifts and additional workdays, routine activities like purchasing groceries becomes a burdensome task. This program relies Holy Spirit volunteers to help with that burden.

Shop4Me has volunteers “buddy up” with a health care worker family. We hope to have enough volunteers so that two volunteers can be assigned to each health care worker family. The first task will be to execute the weekly grocery shopping run for your assigned family. Using Google Sheets, the health care worker family creates a shopping list, and the volunteer makes the grocery run. The shopper is repaid by the health care worker family using Venmo.

To be consistent with CDC guidelines, volunteers must:

– Be under 65 years of age
– Have no underlying serious health conditions (cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc.)

If you are open to participating in the program as a volunteer please email Social Ministries Director Mike Ferrero at mike.ferrero@dsj.org . Mike will have our Shop4Me Program Manager, Tom Mohr, follow up with a Registration Form and further details will follow.

If you have a health care worker living under your roof and are interested in participating in the program, please email our HCW Lead person, Jeff Aboud at jaboud@in-focusmarketing.com.  We’re asking our Health Care Worker families to consider supporting the program in hopes:

– You will benefit from the help. Grocery shopping can take upwards of two hours door to door. Given the other demands on your time, this is one less thing for you to worry about. 

– You will reduce community risk. As the Family of a Health Care Worker, you have accepted increased risk of virus exposure. By allowing a Support Team to shop for you, you reduce grocery store transmission risk.Health Care Workers are used to being self-sufficient. Your first instinct might be to say “No, we can handle things on our own”. Please resist that instinct. Allow your fellow parishioners to help you.

We invite our parishioners to consider participating in the Shop4Me program; either as a volunteer or as a HCW recipient.  Our health care worker families are on the front lines in this pandemic. They need the support of all of us who do not have health care workers in our midst, to support them while they support us and our community.

Together, and with God’s help, we will come through this pandemic safely and as community!