By Gretchen Keiser

A summer program, which will cast the talents, stamina and resources of parishes and hundreds of volunteers on the side of Atlanta’s vulnerable children, is being launched in the Archdiocese of Atlanta.

The program, designed to serve 600 to 700 children who otherwise might be on the streets when schools close in June, will be based in three parishes: Sts. Peter and Paul in Decatur, St. Anthony’s in southwest Atlanta and St. Paul of the Cross in northwest Atlanta. Our Lady of Lourdes and Blessed Sacrament parishes are also participants. At present, they are not designated as day camp sites, but will be bases of other forms of service.

It will be a five-day-a-week, 10-week program, running from mid-June, when schools close, to late August, when they reopen. The day camp programs in each of the three parishes will run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., Monday through Friday, with provision for early drop-off of children beginning at 7 a.m. and late pick-up until 6 p.m.

The programs will be coordinated on an archdiocesan level by Sister Margaret McAnoy, IHM, Msgr. Jerry Hardy and Father James Miceli, working with pastors and staff of the three parishes and directors from each parish. The programs, as envisioned, will include time each day for tutorial work, recreation, and prayer and spiritual enrichment, lunch for the children and a snack. While the resources and facilities of the three parishes will be used as a base, all parishes are being urged to assist in the archdiocesan effort.

Critical to the success of the program is the response of several hundred volunteers who will be needed to donate their time and talent to children, coordinators say.

Also considered critical is a second collection to be taken up at all Masses on Palm Sunday to provide the basic funds for the program.

“We’ll need an army of volunteers and the most generous response our second collections can provide,” Monsignor Hardy said.

Impetus for the program began in early March, at a consultors’ meeting of Archbishop Thomas Donnellan with archdiocesan priests, Monsignor Hardy said. The crisis surrounding the deaths and disappearances of now more than 20 black children in Atlanta called for “a clear and unmistakable witness of the Church’s presence to these people, their problems and the things which cause them,” he said.

It was felt the summer program would be a concrete response which could provide a measure of safety for some of the children living in public housing, and a measure of peace to parents, anxiously concerned about their children’s whereabouts, particularly when schools let out for the summer.

The program is also seen as an opportunity for people “to offer their talents and gifts to do something concrete” in response to the murders and heightened awareness of children’s vulnerability, Monsignor Hardy said.

“We’re getting calls and letters from all over the country, asking ‘What can we do to help?’” he said. “There is a great feeling of compassion and people are looking for tangible ways to express it.”

Archbishop Donnellan noted that the first appeal to members of the archdiocese was a call for “prayer and penance especially within our Lenten tradition.” In a letter to the archdiocese several weeks ago, Archbishop Donnellan asked that the Fridays in Lent be made days of special sacrifice and prayer for the children, their families, and the Atlanta community.

The summer program, in addition to its attempt to provide concrete assistance to Atlanta families, also reflects a pastoral responsibility “towards the totality of our people, who really develop their relationship with God in terms of love of neighbor,” Archbishop Donnellan said. “It had to involve the Catholic community as a whole.”

Specifically, he said, “our very modest program…says to our community, ‘When somebody’s hurting, we all hurt.’”

“The black community is pained and hurting,” he said, “and it’s exceedingly important that they receive support from the whole community.”

Meetings between the archbishop and pastors of five parishes in black communities led to the plan to concentrate the programs in three parishes, most accessible to families living in some of the city’s major housing projects.

The three sites, while able to serve only a small number of the children living in city neighborhoods, provide a specific link, also, to programs being planned by an ecumenical coalition in Atlanta and the city itself. Overall, the groups are working together to avoid duplicating services in one area and neglecting another. The Archdiocese’s program has provided a base in three neighborhoods around which other churches, religious groups and agencies can build to reach further into neighborhoods.

Sister Margaret McAnoy, former principal of Our Lady of Lourdes school, and most recently a teacher at St. Pius X High School and coordinator of the Cursillo program, emphasized that the summer programs are “a beginning” on a small scale, rich with opportunities.

“We are talking about a lot of volunteers,” she said, estimating that to serve the full capacity of children, some 400 to 500 volunteers will be needed. But, she emphasized that the program is open to the talents which are available, whether it be some experience as a teacher or recreation leader or worker – or simply the ability to pitch in on a project.

“People don’t need any specific talents,” she said. “We’ll help them to see talents they didn’t know they had.”

Volunteer forms will be placed in all of the parishes shortly, she said, and Sister Margaret is available to speak to groups about the programs and the ways that people can get involved. One of the approaches being taken, also, is invitations which are being sent to all the religious communities represented in the archdiocese, asking whether sisters from the communities might be interested in spending a two-week period working for the program this summer. Similar invitations are being made to diocesan seminarians. “We’re not asking for people’s whole summers, we’re asking for a couple of weeks,” she said.

Other needs of the programs include supplies, access to recreation areas for field trips, housing for those coming from out of town, and, possibly, sponsorship of children for day-camp sessions. The day camp fee will be $5 a day “to anybody who can afford it, but we’re stressing that it goes from $5 a day down to zero” for those who can’t afford to pay, she said.

While the programs are a response to the murders and disappearances of Atlanta’s children, they are also being seen in the light of needs which existed before, and will exist beyond the violence of the moment. One of her students at St. Pius asked her what would happen if the killings stopped or an arrest was made, Sister Margaret said, “It’s an answer to what’s happening now, but the programs have to continue,” she said.

Monsignor Hardy also noted that the program “is a response aimed specifically and directly at the summertime.”

But, he said, “it would be our hope that there would be some ongoing things as a result of this, particularly establishing new presence of the local church to these poorer areas and their people, and building new links between our congregations and other congregations which are in those areas or concerned about conditions in those areas.”