Thom’s Helpers
St Thomas has proudly hosted the Thom’s Helpers ministry since 2014. Thom’s Helpers are young adults with special needs who work at St Thomas three days a week helping with various projects and tasks. This is a source of pride and meaningful work for our young adults, and a real ministry to the church, where they help with quite a bit of our weekly duties, including recycling, cleaning, event setup and bulletin sorting! Our Thom’s Helpers are a valued part of the weekly volunteer staff at our parish.
Trained volunteers lend their time and talent to this ministry as well, working with our Thom’s Helpers through the day and helping to keep them organized. Our volunteers have found this to be a high-energy and very rewarding ministry! For information about volunteering, please contact our parish office at 913-451-0512.
Some current Thom’s Helpers projects include:
- Helping set up for events
- Managing weekly bulletin inserts, recycling, and food pantry deliveries
- Baking cookies for church and community events (for prices and ordering, please contact our parish office)
- Confidential paper shredding
- Various cleaning duties
- Other duties as assigned!
Thom’s Village
Thom’s Village is a new program within the St. Thomas special needs ministries that provides respite time for caregivers of children and adults with special needs.
Thom’s Village will be offered on the third Thursday of each month. We will have planned large-group, small-group, and individual participant-to-buddy activities so your loved one can participate in ways that work best for them and are fun.
Our volunteers understand that each participant communicates and participates in different ways, and we are committed to making sure everyone has a fun and enjoyable time. Each participant will have at least one volunteer buddy who will spend the evening one-on-one with them.
We also have a core team of medical volunteers who can provide care such as toileting, secretion management, positioning, and ambulation. Our additional core volunteers will guide our volunteer buddies in understanding how to make the evening comfortable and fun for each participant.