Today we had our community meeting at Murrysville Sports Zone. The purpose of this meeting was to figure out how we as a community can come together in response to the events at Franklin Regional. There are a lot of people in this community with big hearts and who want to help. Our hopes is to help create a central way to track and coordinate outreach events. Please contact Trista at tristajlucas@gmail.com to have your outreach event or efforts updated here. Copy things here and put it on your webpage. Calendar is being made too.
In today’s meeting these are the things that we discussed:
– S&T bank has a fund set up for FR
-Fox’s Pizza is selling t-shirt Jim Fox needs volunteers to help make shirts!!!! He needs them to be in production around the clock. If you can help him, contact Fox’s Pizza.Shirts can be ordered at Murrysville Sports Zone, Penn Trafford and FRproud.webs.com
-There is an event at the Delmont Fire Hall that is in the making to honor first responders. As information comes in about that, we will keep you updated.
-There is a Banner Signing Saturday from 9 am to 6 pm at the Village of Murrysville and Saturday evening at the Murrysville’s sport’s zone (see next bullet).
-Murrysville Sports Zone is having a public skate April 12 from 8 to 10 pm. All proceeds go to the families of Franklin Regional. The event is free to all families of the tragedy. The event includes a Live DJ, concessions, raffle, games, vendors, tshirts and more! Citizens Bank is partnered with Murrysville Sports Zone in this fundraiser. Murrysville SportZone also in collaborating with the ACV foundation in raising funds. Murrysville SportsZone is also working on having car decals made. THEY ARE LOOKING FOR BAND MEMBERS FROM FRANKLIN REGIONAL TO PLAY AT THIS EVENT.
-Emmanuel Reformed United Church of Christ on Hills Church Road (That’s us) is hosting a community sunrise service April 20th at 6:30 am
-East Suburban YMCA is offering a free membership to students (school ID required) until the end of the school year
-PatCatans is selling ribbons to raise money for FR
-There is a PO Box set up for cards: Hearts 4 FR PO Box 371 Murrysville, Pa 15668 -Ferry’s grocery store in Murrysville is having yard signs made as a benefit for FR. These signs may be available for purchase by Wednesday.
-Mother of Sorrows church in Murrysville graciously offers their church hall for any events -Pressley Ridge (http://www.pressleyridge.org/) is offering free counseling services for families of FR
-Anytime Fitness will run any outreach events on their TVs and advertise them at their Gym -Hebron church of Penn Hills have parents of FR that are interested in making cookies for the students and faculty
-Shred-it is a paper shredding company who is donating 6 trucks to be located at 3 locations Saturday April 19th from 9am to 12pm at Murrysville SportsZone, Export Fire Hall, and Murrysville Fire Hall. Community members bring your unwanted personal documents to be shredded in a fun way to raise money for FR
-Ezra Ministries is offering temperament analysis profile for free and other counseling at 2pm April 12th, 2 pm April 13th and 6 pm on April 14th
-A combined effort between community churches, National Day of Prayer May 1st from 7pm to 8:30 pm at Murrysville SportsZone. This is an annual event where the community unites to pray for our country and our churches and this year will obviously be focused on the spiritual needs of our community.
Parents in attendance were concerned about their children returning to the halls of the high school next week. We would like to find a way to soften that experience of reentering those halls. If anyone knows how to get in touch with the school district or you are part of the school district, please get in touch with me. Community members want to know if they would be able to decorate the halls or something to make it a little less traumatic.
During this meeting we discussed other events that will offer some emotional and spiritual support for the community and as those event develop we will post them. The most important point that was made during this meeting is that our community will take time to heal and that as all the media hype calms down there will still be people mending their hearts and spirits. There is a tremendous concern for people that will suffer long term from this tragedy and so we have to create ways to provide ongoing support.
THANK TO EVERYONE IN ATTENDANCE TODAY! I will be personally contacting you so we can all work productively. Our church wanted to reach out to all of you so that we can help organize and raise awareness of community efforts and I think we accomplished that today. Please let me know if I have any errors in this post or if I am missing anything. Thanks!
Brightest Blessings! Trista
Emmanuel Reformed Church of the United Church of Christ 