CSS Outreach Offices

By Julie Perry,
St. Francis Gift and Thrift Store Manager

By definition, a volunteer is a person who freely offers to take part in an enterprise or undertake a task. At Catholic Social Services of Southern Nebraska (CSS), it is so much more. It is showing up with heart and compassion, and serving with CSS’s core values of Dignity, Integrity, Empathy, Trust, and Sustainability.

By Katie Patrick

Two weeks ago, I shared the story of a young woman who was living in an unsafe situation. Her mom reached out to me on Christmas Eve begging for local resources that could help her daughter. The parents lived in another state, and with a little more information, I gathered that the daughter was a drug user and the parents forbade drug use in the home. 

While there may have been other reasons that the daughter chose to live in a city a thousand miles away, the reality of her being so far from her family—her natural safety net—caused deep physical and emotional distress. In other words, due to distance and previously severed relationships, the crisis displaced the family as the primary responder. When this happens, neighbors and the local community become the next line of support—followed by organizations.

By Katie Patrick

Neighbors helping neighbors.

Over the past few weeks, this phrase has been heard frequently alongside victims and state leaders alike, as they talked about the largest wildfire in our state’s history. More than 800,000 acres burned in the Nebraska wildfires, affecting fields and displacing cattle at all stages of operations— disrupting herd management, altering breeding and nutritional patterns, rotational grazing and much more.

Yet, it seems that at every stage, help came from neighbors—whether those in close proximity to the fires, whose land was spared, or those in neighboring states who stepped up to help. This is what Nebraska is all about—resilience and compassion.