By Kathi Stearns

Two nuns, a banker, a Ph.D. candidate and a computer systems analyst were among 25 people gathered outside the Georgia Dome at 6 a.m. on a recent Saturday morning.

Leaving their educational and professional backgrounds at the gate, they entered a checkpoint where they were handed a purple apron, a tie and a name tag.

“I feel like I’m entering the twilight zone,” the banker said. “No, you’re entering the fast-food zone,” the accountant joked.

It wasn’t a desire to be a short-order cook that brought them to the Dome. It was because the St. Vincent de Paul (SVDP) Society needed volunteers to run a concession stand.

A lay Catholic organization which helps people in need of food, money for rent and utilities, medicine and emergency items, the Society receives a portion of the profits when it staffs a food concession stand at the Dome.

“The bottom line is I really believe in what St. Vincent de Paul does. People go (to the Society) for help and they get it. I think that any way we can support their operation is worthwhile,” said Sister Helen Mick, CSJ, one of those who volunteered to work 11 hours Labor Day weekend.

She and Sister Jodi Creten, CSJ, are regular volunteers at the Dome for the Society, which is responsible for staffing a booth for 25 events from August through March.

The two nuns were so popular at the Labor Day weekend Amway convention at the Dome that they also raised over $100 in tips for the Society and were dubbed “The $100 Babes” by the other volunteers.

Their commitment underlines the fact that the Society is always in need of greater financial support to respond compassionately to people in desperate need of help.

On Sunday, Sept. 25, the Society will be the recipient of an annual collection taken up in all parishes and missions of the archdiocese.

This year the goal is $130,000, which will provide only one-sixth of the Society’s needed income. The donations received in the collection will provide direct aid to people in Atlanta’s inner city and those parishes in the archdiocese where there is no SVDP conference. Last year’s annual collection raised $126,725.

Currently 50 outside agencies refer cases to SVDP. The Atlanta Particular Council Office, headed by executive director Sheila Bissonnette, deals weekly with approximately 200 calls seeking assistance.

“For SVDP, the annual appeal is a basis of support that proves to individuals, corporations and foundations that we are a viable organization,” Ms. Bissonnette said. With the support of the archdiocese through the Sept. 25 collection, she can beg for additional financial support from foundations and corporations to help the poor.

The success of the annual collection correlates directly with the number of people the Society will be able to assist in the coming 12 months, Ms. Bissonnette noted.

She has undertaken additional projects, like the Dome concession stand and the Hunger Walk, to try and offset any shortfall in the collection and to have the ability to say yet to more people with emergency needs.

The Society’s motto is “No act of charity is foreign to the Society.”

“This means that we’ll consider any request for assistance,” Ms. Bissonnette said.

The charitable acts of the Society have inspired people to work for them, even in the offbeat roles of volunteer cashiers and cooks at the Dome.

According to pat Lynch, a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia State University, SVDP takes care of things that nobody else does.

Ms. Lynch recalled an instance when a social worker from St. Joseph’s Hospital in Atlanta called St. Vincent’s to enlist help for a terminally ill woman wanting to see her youngest son who was in a Florida prison. SVDP raised the funds and cleared the bureaucratic hurdles to allow the man to see his mother before she died.

“That’s the beauty of the organization,” Ms. Lynch said. “SVDP takes on issues which are important to individuals which nobody else is addressing. Without their interest and assistance people’s needs would continue top fall through the cracks.”

According to Ms. Lynch the Dome experience lets her share information about the work of the Society. “May of the volunteers we work with are non-Catholic; this provides us with the opportunity to share SVDP’s story with both the volunteers and the customers,” she said.

In certain instances customers look puzzled when they see a neophyte cashier searching for a food item on the cash register or hear a frenzied volunteer cook yell, “We’re out of hot dogs.” Volunteer cashiers choose to explain the mission of SVDP during these pregnant pauses.

“The volunteers are giving people. It is really neat to work with people who give that kind of time and energy to something,” said Sister Mick.

Yet for many others volunteering means being a true steward of their faith. “Working at the Dome is a productive way to spend free time in an effort to help an organization like SVDP,” said Whitney Robichaux, a permanent deacon at the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta who also donated time over Labor Day.

For Ms. Bissonnette, the labor-intensive Dome project translates into meeting a few more of the critical needs her staff hears about each day.

“The Dome is a lot of work. It’s recruiting the volunteers, training them, working six or seven hours, but it’s certainly worth it to me,” Ms. Bissonnette said.

“Each time we work at the Dome it means one more family will have their rent paid. Maybe eviction will be avoided, but certainly they’ll have 30 days of shelter. One more family will have the utilities paid.”

Last year the Dome project raised $9,000 for the Particular Council, while Ms. Bissonnette estimates the average aid given to families was $353 for a rent payment and $166 for a utility payment for a month.

If the Dome project enabled the Society to help approximately 18 more families last year, it only underlines the importance of the annual collection and its goal of $130,000.

Last year through all its funding sources the Particular Council helped 288 families avoid eviction through rent or housing payment aid, and also gave clothing to 1,323 families and baskets of food to 855 people.