Compassion Offering

February Compassion Offering: La Casa de la Misericordia

Orchard Ridge UCC on February 1, 2026

La Casa de la Misericordia is a welcome center in Nogales, Mexico. Prior to changes in immigration policy on January 21, 2026, “La Casa” provided a safe home for single women and women with children who were waiting, with papers, to come legally to the United States. Now it also offers a home for women and children who have been deported from the United States to Mexico.

A visit to “La Casa” is like finding joy in the midst of tragedy. A number of us had that experience as part of the ORUCC immigration immersion trip last January. The grounds of La Casa include a playground, an accredited school, legal services, a dormitory, and eating facilities. Our funds will help sustain and expand this life-giving setting to young women and children across the border.

For more information, please view this greeting to you. https://photos.app.goo.gl/bp5gkikSPcywj1WL7

December Compassion Offering: The UCC Christmas Fund

Orchard Ridge UCC on December 1, 2025

For more than 100 years, The Pension Boards-United Church of Christ (PBUCC) has been able to provide financial assistance to UCC pastors, church workers and their families thanks to congregations and individuals contributing to the fund.

The Christmas Fund has been caring for active and retired clergy and lay employees of the United Church of Christ for over 100 years, providing emergency grants, supplementation of small annuities and health premiums, and Christmas “Thank You” gift checks each December to our lower-income retirees.

United Church of Christ congregations and members have blessed the Christmas Fund with their generosity for many years. This year, your care and compassion will be especially appreciated by those servants of the church who are facing a time of need. Thank you!

November Compassion Offering: The ORUCC Thanksgiving Year-Round Fund

Orchard Ridge UCC on November 1, 2025

ORUCC has a long tradition of supporting our social services partners in their work with neighbors in need. Families in southwest Madison are being hit hard by high food costs, inflation due to tariffs, federal budget cuts, and skyrocketing rent. For the neediest ORUCC neighbors, any extra or unpredictable expenses can be a huge challenge. Illness, job loss, a car expense, or other costs can leave families with an urgent need.

For many years, ORUCC assisted families with gift cards and worked with Joining Forces for Families to get the cards to needy neighbors. In 2020, the ORUCC Thanksgiving Year-Round Fund was established to help support our neighbors with Woodman’s gift cards. Since that time, cards have been available throughout the year for emergencies and extra expenses, and have been distributed by staff from Joining Forces for Families (JFF), Children’s Wisconsin – Early Childhood Development, and other neighborhood partners. There is a need to replenish this fund to continue this vital support.

ORUCC member Loretta Swanson and Community Social Worker, Eric Alvin are our lead social services team who distribute the gift cards to individuals and families in the neighborhood. A $25 gift card can cover the cost of extra food needed while children are home during holiday breaks, partially fill a gas tank to allow travel for a job or for an interview, or provide supplies like emergency infant formula or over-the-counter medication. Holidays can present significant challenges for families who seek special items specific to a family’s culture or country of origin. These items will likely be more expensive this year due to tariffs. The cards also are extremely helpful to JFF and community partners in helping to engage and connect families with other services.

Given the state of the economy and the political environment in 2025, the need is expected to increase substantially. Please consider a donation to the Thanksgiving Year-Round Fund to provide direct support to families and individuals in our neighborhood. Your donation is truly appreciated, this holiday season and beyond.

October Compassion Offering: Al-Ahli Gaza Hospital

Orchard Ridge UCC on October 1, 2025

During this terrifying time, Al-Ahli Gaza Hospital is one of the few remaining hospitals able to provide medical services to families in Gaza. The hospital is run by the Episcopal Diocese of Jerusalem, a UCC Mission Partner organization, and is staffed by both Palestinian and international professionals from around the world.

Several times in the past two years, Al-Ahli Hospital was bombed and invaded by Israeli ground troops. Throughout these attacks and subsequent evacuations of the hospital grounds, Al-Ahli’s staff of 116 have shown heroic courage and determination, setting up tent clinics and mobile services in nearby towns and villages, and always returning to the hospital to provide ongoing medical care for the wounded.

Your donation to Al-Ahli Gaza Hospital will literally save lives and enhance healing, providing children and families with emergency and trauma care, treatment for burns (primarily children), physical therapy for wounds and loss of limbs, treatment for malnourished (starved) children, and more.

September Compassion Offering: Guatemala Medical Resources Partnership (GMRP)

Orchard Ridge UCC on September 1, 2025

Guatemala Medical Resources Partnership (GMRP)

Oliveros is a tiny village about 3 hours south of Guatemala City. It and other small villages are in a very poor district. It’s a sugar cane growing area. Jobs are scarce and pay is poor.

The nearest doctor is 25 miles away. The difference between the resources we have here in the US and that part of Guatemala is shockingly stark.

The GMRP clinic, a project of the Thiensville-Mequon Rotary Clubs, takes place every January in a school while students are on winter break. The school is 5 or 6 rooms in a cement block building with a tin roof and windows without glass.

The need is incredible. In 4 ½ days the clinic will see 600-700 people, some seeing a medical provider, a dentist and/or an optometrist. The clinic opens at 8:00 am but at 5:00 am there may already be 40 people waiting outside.

About 40 people—doctors, nurses, dentists, optometrists, translators, pharmacists and general helpers—make the clinic work.

The clinic has been operating for 22 years. Some of the equipment was donated, already used, 22 years ago. This year we have to replace some of this equipment because it is almost unusable after many repairs. That’s why September’s Compassion Offering is so important. Please be generous, the people of Oliveros will benefit so much.

For more information about the Guatemala Medical Resources Partnership (GMRP), please view this brief video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrAvXTMqeg8 and/or visit www.gmrp.org

August Compassion Offering: GSAFE (Gay/Straight Alliance for Safe Schools)

Orchard Ridge UCC on August 1, 2025

For nearly three decades, Wisconsin’s queer and trans youth have been at the center of our mission. Two of our most longstanding programs provide direct support for LGBTQ+ youth, including our Leadership Training Institute– a four-day summer intensive for high school students– and our Middle School GSA Leadership Summit, which brings together GSAs statewide to enhance competency and advocacy around inclusive best practices in schools.

Additionally, we know that LGBTQ+ identified youth thrive with secure, healthy networks of support. Within the last decade, we’ve built connections with Wisconsin’s educators through programs like our annual Safe Schools, Safe Communities conference, where educators, counselors, and other adult allies across Wisconsin connect and share tools to create safer environments for queer and trans youth. Most recently, we’ve begun collaborating with Rainbowland Action Initiative to provide monthly in-person support groups for families of queer and trans youth across Dane and Milwaukee counties.

July Compassion Offering: Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (GSLC) Food Pantry

Orchard Ridge UCC on July 1, 2025

Good Shepherd Lutheran Church (GSLC) offers a weekly food pantry serving the Orchard Ridge neighborhood and surrounding areas. Located at 5701 Raymond Road in Meadowood, the GSLC pantry currently serves up to 75 eligible individuals and families every Thursday. Rick Thomas, GSLC Outreach Director, reports that local pantries continue to see reduced food availability from Second Harvest due to high demand and threatened reductions in federal funding. Donations from the July 2025 compassion offering will go toward purchase of food items and essentials that best meet the needs of food pantry clients.

Simply stated, this mission eases suffering and addresses basic human needs at the local level.

In addition to giving generously this month, here are additional ways that you can help:

Food, paper goods or personal items are also accepted year-round at the GSLC Donation Room during weekday hours.
Volunteer at the GSLC Food Pantry: Assist with registration, act as a host or help with stocking the shelves. Thursdays, 9:30am-Noon or 5:30pm-7pm. Familiarity with languages is a bonus, such as Spanish, Middle Eastern dialects, others.
Volunteer your time in the ORUCC Veggie Village garden where we tend and harvest fresh vegetables for the GSLC food pantry.

July Compassion Offering: Casa Alitas

Orchard Ridge UCC on July 2, 2023

Casa Alitas is a non-profit, immigrant welcome center near the border in Tucson, Arizona. The compassion offering for Casa Alitas from our congregation will help people at the border find a safer, more secure life.

Casa Alitas provides a warm welcome, food, clothing, and shelter for a few days for legal asylum seekers who have crossed the border. It also makes travel arrangements for people to reach the homes of their sponsors in the United States. Casa Alitas provides services to 500 to 1,000 guests every day.

ORUCC has a hands-on history with Casa Alitas, particularly through our annual clothing drive, such as the drive ongoing now. In addition, a number of us have had the opportunity to volunteer at Casa Alitas.

Funds from the compassion offering will provide direct services to immigrant families. Funds will

buy items for play bags for children,
pay for transportation to reunite families who have been separated at the border,
buy plane tickets for people to reach the homes of their sponsors in the United States, and
pay for the food, medical services, and shelter provided by Casa Alitas.

Thank you in advance for your contribution.

Video

You can make a donation by check, on the memo line, please write “compassion” and mail to ORUCC, 1501 Gilbert Road, Madison, WI 53711, or donate online from our website. The link is https://orucc.org/contribute/support/

February Compassion Offering: Worker Justice Wisconsin

Orchard Ridge UCC on February 1, 2023

Worker Justice Wisconsin (WJW) is a Madison-based nonprofit that builds collective worker power together with faith and labor allies. Our worker center educates and empowers employees who do not have a union. We help them file complaints with state agencies, incubate worker-owned cooperatives, and train workers to organize their coworkers. With a mostly bilingual staff, WJW pays special attention to the Spanish-speaking, immigrant working class. In 2022, WJW trained 140 workers, helped recover $121,560.11 in previously owed but unpaid wages, organized two job sites, and incubated three cooperatives. Of the 200+ workers who opened cases in 2022, over 90% were immigrants, and 89% were Latinx.

February’s Compassion Offering will be deposited in the WJW Solidarity Fund. The Fund encourages workers to engage in job site organizing by providing a basic financial safety net. If a worker is retaliated against or fired by their employer for engaging in legally protected organizing activity, or if a workforce decides to go on strike, they can receive up to 50% of their income from the fund (so long as funds last and up to two months). The Fund is crucial to bolstering workers’ bargaining power. It is not charity. It is a direct contribution to workers’ struggle to overcome structural inequality.

January Compassion Offering: Ethical Trade Company

Orchard Ridge UCC on January 1, 2023

Ethical Trade Co was founded in 2015 after our founders witnessed firsthand exploitation and human trafficking affecting people in southeast Asia. We met companies there that offered ethical employment opportunities to the people in their communities to prevent further exploitation. Feeling inspired, we set out to provide a marketplace for the products they were making so that they could offer ethical employment to even more people. Today our work financially empowers formerly exploited people in more than 25 countries.

As we sell items or receive donations into our general fund we are able to purchase more products which uphold the vision of empowering artisans by paying them a livable wage for their labor so that they are able to break free from exploitation and trafficking.

Any funds received through the Compassion Offering will be used to cover overhead costs to fulfill our mission to empower and support artisans around the world to break free from exploitation and extortion, as well as buying more products from our artisans to keep the circle of empowerment strong. Thank you for your generous support!

December Compassion Offering: UCC Christmas Fund

Orchard Ridge UCC on December 1, 2022

United Church of Christ retired clergy, servants of the church, have spent lifetimes baptizing and blessing, teaching and preaching, marrying and burying, and comforting and empowering God’s people. The UCC Christmas Fund for Veterans of the Cross gives us the opportunity to sustain and empower them. Gifts to the fund help retired clergy, church staff, and their families supplement pension benefits, pay bills, maintain health insurance, supplement health benefits, and meet emergency needs. In 2021, gifts to the Christmas Fund enabled pension supplementation for 231 retired clergy and lay employees, health benefit supplementation for 87 retired clergy and lay employees, emergency grants for 53 individuals and families, and Christmas “thank you” gift checks to 509 retired clergy and lay employees. Gifts to the Christmas fund in 2022 will make a real difference in the lives of retired clergy church staff, and their families, easing the anxiety of constant financial worries.

Here’s a link to the National UCC’s Christmas Fund promotional video, on You Tube:

November Compassion Offering: Neighborhood Schools

Orchard Ridge UCC on November 1, 2022

Our 3 neighborhood schools — Anana Elementary, Orchard Ridge Elementary, and Toki Middle School — are always in need of our support. And this is especially true in 2022, when budgets are tight and when so many families living in southwest Madison are stretched financially.

As you’ll see from this short video, each school is planning to make use of our compassion offering in different ways. These range from funding basic supplies, to providing students with winter clothing, to paying for yearbooks so no child is left without one, and to beautifying a stage so students and staff can take pride in their facility.

We invite you to please give generously and give what you can in support of our neighborhood schools. Thank you Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ for your timely and generous support!

Link to video (embedded if you click through to the post)

You can make a donation by check, on the memo line, please write “compassion” and mail to ORUCC, 1501 Gilbert Road, Madison, WI 53711, or donate online from our website.

October Compassion Offering: The Crossing Campus Ministry

Orchard Ridge UCC on October 1, 2022

The Crossing is a progressive Christian campus ministry on the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus. The mission of The Crossing is to provide a Christian campus ministry where students can explore, question, understand, develop and affirm their relationship to God, each other and the world. This mission includes being a diverse and theologically open-minded Christian ministry that allows members of the university community the freedom to grasp anew the love and grace of God through an understanding of, and commitment to, living the gospel of Jesus Christ with a particular focus on his life and teachings. In short, The Crossing is a place where students can belong in community, explore their faith, and become their authentic selves.

At The Crossing when we say “ALL ARE WELCOME”, we mean it. The Crossing is a Reconciling in Christ, Open, Welcoming and Affirming ministry. We celebrate God’s diversity in sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, different abilities, faith tradition or lack of faith, national origin, racial, ethnic and economic background and any other difference.

During the 2021-2022 academic year The Crossing hosted around 125 students per week in the study/community spaces and over 75 students participated in worship and small group programs. In addition, The Crossing fed around 150 students per week through the Food Recovery Network and the Frozen Meal Program, not including the hundreds of students and community members that our longtime friends from Slow Food UW host in the building.

Events planned for this Fall include:

Welcome Back Pie Extravaganza & Concert
Open Mic Night
Weekly Dinner+Worship
Weekly Bible Study
Fellowship & support groups for Freshman and Graduate students
Queer Students of Faith exploring queer theology
Food Recovery Meals – Free hot meals are served on Tuesday evenings & Friday lunch-time
UW Frozen Meals – Frozen meals from the UW dining halls are delivered weekly; available when the building is open

Watch the video

Compassion Offering for July: Casa Alitas

Orchard Ridge UCC on July 1, 2022

Casa Alitas is a non-profit, immigrant welcome center in Tucson, Arizona. The Center provides a warm welcome, food, clothing, shelter for a few days, medical care, assistance in reuniting families who have been separated at the border, and then assistance for these families with transportation to sponsors who await them in the United States.

ORUCC has a hands-on history with Casa Alitas, even though it is miles away. You may remember that we sponsored a wonderfully successful clothing drive in 2021, and are planning another for this August.

Funds from the compassion offering will be used to provide direct services to immigrant families. For example, it will help reunite families who have been separated at the border, to buy plane tickets for people to reach the homes of their sponsors in the United States, and to pay for the food, medical supplies, and shelter provided by Casa Alitas.

Thank you in advance for your contribution.

VIDEO link

You can make a donation by check, on the memo line, please write “compassion” and mail to ORUCC, 1501 Gilbert Road, Madison, WI 53711, or donate online.

May Compassion Offering: Wisconsin UCC Outdoor Ministry Program

Orchard Ridge UCC on May 1, 2022

Our May compassion offering will go to Wisconsin’s outdoor ministry program (UCCI) which includes 3 camps: Moon Beach in the north woods, Daycholah on Green Lake, and Cedar Valley in southeast Wisconsin. It’s no surprise that the pandemic was hard on the camps. Even this year, in January, we had to cancel our all-church retreat at Daycholah. Despite the major challenges to the camps, the staff has managed to keep them alive with donations and creative options.

Our camps are sacred spaces to many of us at Orchard Ridge and around the state. They serve families, individuals, people with special needs, and people who benefit from scholarships, They are a great asset for building our spiritual lives and strengthening our lives together.

It ’s crucial we keep our camps strong and energized.

VIDEO

You can make a donation by check, on the memo line, please write “compassion” and mail to ORUCC, 1501 Gilbert Road, Madison, WI 53711, or donate online at orucc.org