Church Assembling Care Kits for African Relief

This article was submitted by Nathan Creitz of Grace Community Church

On Saturday, March 5, from 10 a.m. to 12:30 p.m., Grace Community Church in Marblehead will host an event to supply caregivers in Africa with materials necessary to care for patients with HIV/AIDS.

The caregivers in Africa are trained and supplied through World Vision, an international Christian humanitarian organization. Dozens of volunteers will assemble the kits on an assembly line at the church facility on Pleasant Street.

The event is free of charge and open to the public. Childcare will be available, but some children may be interested in assembling kits during the event.

Members of Grace Community Church are leading this initiative, including residents, but it has had a broader acceptance from other groups. High School students will be spending some of their community service hours at the event.

Residents and business owners are invited and students from Salem State University have expressed an interest in the event.

Members of the band The Wellspring Embrace, Austin Rogers, Tim Nelson, and Nick Lake, will perform and there will be a short orientation time before the kits are actually assembled. 

In the past two months, the church has raised nearly $8,000 to purchase supplies. This amount was enough to purchase supplies for 275 kits.

These kits will provide 55 caregivers with enough supplies to care for over 600 children, women, and men in Africa who are suffering from HIV/AIDS. The raised funds came from church members, members of the Marblehead community, and other local businesses and organizations.

 Grace Community Church is an inter-denominational church located at 17 Pleasant Street in Marblehead, MA. The church recently celebrated their 200th anniversary. The regular service time is 10:45 on Sunday mornings.

There is also a 9:30 Family Bible Hour before the service. Plenty of street parking is available as well as parking at the Masonic Temple on Pleasant Street for the event and for normal weekly service times.

World Vision is an international Christian humanitarian organization that works in nearly 100 countries around the globe, combating the root causes of poverty and responding quickly when disaster strikes. 

They partner with communities to find lasting ways of improving the lives of children and their families while providing international disaster relief. The event in Marblehead will focus especially on their work with children and adults who suffer from AIDS in Africa.