St. Paul parishioner delivers hope with grassroots outreach

John Gilbert understood need when he was growing up.  He and his family sometimes relied on donated food and clothing, often through the Salvation Army, which provided security in their lives.

As an adult, the parishioner of St. Paul in Ellicott City decided he knew just how to give back.

In 2016, the Towson University graduate, 62, found his calling when he established the St. Paul Grassroots and Cold Weather Shelter ministries. There’s also a third one called Creation Care Green Ministry, which assists environmental projects.

“This is my calling, this is my influence, this is my background,” Gilbert said.

The food and shelter ministries don’t wait for donations. The visible part is known to shoppers at a handful of Giant supermarkets in Howard County. Every month, volunteers hand out large shopping bags and a list of what food pantries need across the Archdiocese of Baltimore.

The ministry depends on what it calls “the giving spirit.” And they’ve been fortunate enough to learn that that spirit is very real. Each five-hour drive collects, on average, 1,500 food and toiletry items. The total last year was about 22,300 items.

But the collections, run by a core group of 30 volunteers (with an estimated 250 involved overall) are the simplest part of the operation, Gilbert said. The rest is distribution and redistribution.

The logistics of serving several charitable operations in Howard County and in and around Baltimore are daunting and require expertise in inventory management.

That kind of planning comes easily to Gilbert, a senior official in the Department of Defense. With decades of experience and deployments to nine Middle East nations, he’s a veteran of redistributing supplies.

There are distributions on Sundays during the winter months, including at the Powell Recovery Center, communities in the northern Fells Point area on North Broadway, and near the Shot Tower in Baltimore.

The effort partners with food pantries and groups including the Church of the Resurrection pantry in Burtonsville (Archdiocese of Washington); the Archdiocese of Baltimore’s Grief Ministry (which supports the families of homicide victims); the Longfellow, Wilde Lake and Harper’s Choice neighborhoods in Columbia; the SALT ministry of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Ellicott City; the Fells Point Compassion Center; and the AOLAT addiction treatment center, the Garden of Eden (apartments) Ministry, and Love and Lunches in Baltimore.

Gilbert said he drew inspiration from the example of an uncle who became a Marianist missionary brother, and by Pope Francis’ 2015 encyclical “Laudato Si’ ” (“On Care for Our Common Home”), which called for the love of the most vulnerable by being close to them.

For a week in January, as they have done for the past three years, volunteers from both Resurrection and St. Paul parishes – in support of the Grassroots Cold Weather Shelter ministry – made, delivered and distributed breakfasts, lunches and dinners for 30-plus people staying at an Extended Stay America hotel.

Ministry volunteers also serve dinners, using donated food, once a month at the Grassroots Day Resource Center in Jessup.

The group earned the praise of Arch­bishop William E. Lori in January, when he called it “a powerful demonstration of our faith in action – from the homemade meals (for those) temporarily living in hotels that are hand-delivered year after year, to the food drives held in all-weather conditions outside grocery stores.”

International reach

John Gilbert’s international outreach included working for the Hope Centre from 2008 to 2011 while he was stationed in England. He connected new legal immigrants from Africa with food, housing and language support. In 2020, he was also a Red Cross volunteer, managing a food pantry and distributing excess care package items donated to U.S. service members to those traveling migrant roads in East Africa.

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