Charities to Give to This Holiday – St. Marks & The Dubuque Food Pantry

The Dubuque Food Pantry

Sister Lynn Wagner – manager of the Dubuque Food Pantry

The Dubuque Food Pantry was founded in 1987 and is located at 1598 Jackson Street. The pantry does several things for the community including giving deserving citizens in the Tri-States close to 500 Christmas Baskets a year. The Pantry offers; food, hygiene products, baby items, cleaning supplies and other necessities to those who are down on their luck in the area.

Donations are always welcome at the pantry, be it one of the items aforementioned or cash, the pantry can put it to good use to help out people who truly need it.

The Dubuque Food Pantry
1598 Jackson Street
Dubuque, IA 52001
(563) 583-4440

St. Marks Community Center

Karen Tuecke Marketing – Director at St. Marks

Can you tell us a little about St. Marks?
St. Mark Community Center is a non-profit, non-denominational organization. You might hear “St. Mark” and think it is religious but it is not. St. Mark used to be the old Lutheran church and they donated it to us as a community center in support of under-served youth. We are within the school districts where we have five schools now. We work with kindergarten through fifth grade where we have licensed teachers doing before and after-school academic programming so we are actually listed as an educational institution. We are the only ones in the area that provide before and after-school educational activities.

Most of the kids we work with are under-served so they may be on the less fortunate side, and we try to bring them up to academic speed. We are partnered with the school district in order to provide our services. This year we partnered up with leisure services in order to get the exercise, nutrition and healthy aspects for the kids. We want to be proactive and help these kids, not only academically but nutritionally as well.

What do you plan on doing with the donations you receive this year?
The donations will be used to support our youth. We haven’t determined exactly how, but it will be used in order to support our before and after-school programming. We are evaluating what we need and how much we need it. From that, we will use the donations to support that need. We appreciate any help that we can get from anyone.

One thing I’d like to add… my family was actually in a pickle: both by husbands and my vehicles were totaled…  We were getting ready to go to New York because of a medical emergency with a relative. I just got out of the car shop for some maintenance and repairs and was testing it all out making sure everything was good… then I got hit – head on. Car loaded to the max, ready to go to New York, just went to drive around the block then BAM. So we were stranded without a vehicle and needed to get to New York. My husband immediately looked online for a truck, found one on Runde’s site, and we both agreed on one and within an hour we had it. Runde’s was able to fulfill our needs in an hour or less in an emergency situation, very impressive.

St. Marks Community Center
1201 Locust Street
Dubuque, IA 52001
(563) 582-5655