As they have grown, Youth Villages now assembles the backpacks at their Woburn office…and we can help them by providing supplies.  Here’s how it works.

• Youth Villages has supplied this link  https://a.co/0gTLVn0U to their wish list.  You can help a Youth Villages kid by purchasing some items on this list. Amazon will then send those directly to Youth Villages in Woburn.
• Alternatively, you can buy the same item somewhere else and deliver it to Youth Villages at 12 Gill St in Woburn.
• Items need to be to Youth Villages by August 3rd

Please reach out to Betsy Goodell (or call/text 781-389-8745) with any questions or if you need help with the drop off.

Thanks for making that first day of school happy for some kids who need a kind hand at their back.

As an open and affirming congregation, we celebrate and include people of all identities and life journeys into the full life and ministry of our church. This commitment to radical hospitality is lived out not only in worship, but in the everyday spaces we create together.

Whether neighbors stopping to chat, families gathering after services, or passersby taking a quiet moment, these chairs are a simple, visible sign to all who pass by that there is a place for them at FCCW.

Join us in creating a space of welcome, connection, and belonging for all by sponsoring a $220 chair or buddying up with a friend to sponsor a chair.

“It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold: when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade.”

 –Charles Dickens.

Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church:

Hello from your Outreach team! It’s that time of year where we wonder if Spring will ever arrive. Such dramatic seasons are endemic to New England–the place we are lucky to call home. However, imagine this sense of impermanence in family, home and work. What if even food was as mutable as this spring season?

For children, adolescents and young adults in foster care system, a sense of permanence is invaluable. This is why in 1855, Caroline Plummer generously bequeathed more than $23,000 for the founding of a “farm school of reform for boys,” on Salem’s Winter Island. Caroline understood the challenges of providing for children after the death of her parents and she had to care for her siblings. The home was constructed in the 1860s and served as a boys’ orphanage with residents aged five to 18 attending school, church, and work.

As the years passed, and in consideration of emerging data on child psychology, the reform school model was changed to a home for boys. For decades, Caroline Plummer’s commitment to youth was maintained through dedicated board members, administrators, and staff. By 2012, Plummer was serving boys and girls in residential and community-based settings.

Today, the organization is known as Plummer Youth Promise and they recently completed a new residential building on their campus at Winter Island. Residents now have a separate building with their own bedrooms and single occupancy bathrooms to provide more privacy, focus, and undisturbed sleep.

As part of the campus construction, the original house has also been renovated as a space to continue to house the administrative offices, classrooms, and to add a very special apartment for the residents’ visiting families (families were previously housed in hotels). Plummer Youth Promise will hold a ribbon-cutting ceremony to celebrate this restoration on May 2.

For our 2026 Easter Offering, FCC Winchester Outreach Committee would like to provide furniture for several rooms in this new apartment, including a seating room, kitchen, two bedrooms and bathroom. We are setting a goal of $10,000 to achieve this goal.

We hope we each and as a congregation will respond from the depth of our own faith and commitment to long-term solutions to challenging social issues and consider helping support Plummer Youth Promise furnish their campus apartment for visiting family of foster children. If you can donate, please note “Easter Offering” in the memo line of your check, Venmo, or electronic donation.

Psalm 68:6 “God Settles the Lonely in Families”

Your Outreach team:  Karen Bellacosa, Laurie Galica, Betsy Goodell, Rev. Maeve Kieran Hammond, Marisa Lafferty, Larisa Lindsay, Katie Shanahan, and Jennifer Uzdavinis.

We are looking for Donations for the in-person raffle/silent auction.  Ideas include gift cards from local businesses, home goods, services, vouchers for local experiences or sports events, nights at vacation houses or other creative ideas!

If you are able to offer/donate to the raffle or silent auction, please sign-up at link below.   Items can be dropped off with Petra Sansom – 191 High Street, Winchester (551-221-1876) by March 15th.

https://www.signupgenius.com/go/20F0C4FA4AA2CA6FB6-62054244-pine

Thank you !

Celebrate the Superbowl by giving back to community this year! We invite you to bring canned and non-perishable food to worship on Sunday, February 8. Drop off your donations in one of the red wagons in the church vestibule (the small room before the Sanctuary when you enter through the main church doors). Then, our Outreach Ministry will deliver the goods to the Woburn Council of Social Concern. Touchdown!

• • 21 gift cards valued at $780.
  • $1,575 donated through FCCW
  • $630 made directly to ISA.
  • An amazing total of $2,985

These gifts will mean that our ISA client families will be supported with money for food which is really important due to the cancellation of SNAP benefits for 3 of the 4 families. In addition, ISA has a very challenging year ahead as we help the families become financially independent and help them secure affordable housing and make the big step of paying the up-front costs of a rental and then, finally, moving from their current apartments. One of our families just completed that last step on December 29, moving into an apartment in Melrose after spending the last year in three host homes.  They and we are so grateful.

Dear Members and Friends of First Congregational Church in Winchester, MA, UCC,

The Christmas season calls us to see God’s face in our neighbors. Where do we see Mary, the mother who valiantly protected her baby? Where do we see Joseph, the father who supported his family against all odds? Where do we see Jesus, the Christ who came into this world as a vulnerable child, swaddled in simple cloth to keep him warm in the stable? 

Every winter, the Outreach Ministry at First Congregational Church carefully considers how we, as a congregation and a community, can put our faith into just action by choosing a charitable organization to receive our special Christmas offering. Last year, with your help, we raised over $14,000–our highest offering to date!–to purchase a new stove for The Dwelling Place, a local church-based soup kitchen that provides hundreds of meals a week for unhoused and food-insecure neighbors and a space for immigrant community members to cook and gather. 

This year, we invite you to keep this spirit of generosity flowing. We are pleased to announce Re-Member’s Seasonal Fund as our special Christmas offering recipient. Here’s how Re-Member describes their work: “Re-Member is an independent, non-profit organization working with the Oglala Lakota Nation on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Their mission is to improve the quality of life for those who live there” (Re-Member 2025). 

Many families and individuals who live on Pine Ridge Reservation do not have reliable access to heat during the cold South Dakota winter. Re-Member’s Seasonal Fund “help[s] them source, cut, split, and deliver firewood and provide emergency electric and propane assistance during the cold winter months and operate and expand their Feather II Garden Program during the growing season” (Re-Member 2025). Can you help us meet our goal of $10,000 to keep our neighbors warm this winter?

What’s more: this upcoming June, a multigenerational group of eleven members of our congregation will participate in a week-long service-learning project with Re-Member at Pine Ridge Reservation. We will learn about life on the reservation and work alongside the Oglala Lakota Nation to repair infrastructure, dig and build latrines, harvest food, and more. Your financial contribution to Re-Member’s Seasonal Fund helps us already connect with the people of the Oglala Lakota Nation months before we travel to South Dakota. 

Open your hearts this season. See Mary, Joseph, and Jesus in our neighbors. Donate via Venmo, PayPal, check (with “Re-Member Seasonal Fund” in the memo) or cash. 

In Christ’s peace, 

Rev. Maeve Hammond on behalf of the Outreach Ministry: Karen Bellacosa, Laurie Galica, Betsy Goodell, Marisa Lafferty, Larisa Lindsay (Chair), Jennifer Miller, & Katie Shanahan 

If you would like to donate a chancel Christmas plant as a memorial, or in honor of someone, please fill out this form. You can mail a check to the church office, use Venmo, or PayPal. (Please indicate “Christmas plants” in the memo field). There are special Flower Offering envelopes in the narthex and office lobby. The plants are $20 each.

in Chidley Hall

Bakers Wanted! Junior Forum and Forum are asking bakers to donate homemade cookies or any number of specialty items such as truffles, seasonal breads, confections, etc., for their annual Cookie Walk. This fundraiser helps support the youth service projects. Interested bakers can contact Rev. Maeve with any questions. PLEASE NO NUTS.