Our Work

At the request of the Bishop of the Diocese of Bismarck for a Society presence in each parish, our conference formed at St. Leo’s Church in Minot in January of 2014,  when we began work on developing our conference procedures and guidelines as well as learning about Vincentian spirituality. We also began raising funds to support the work of our conference. This included two rummage sales, selling hot dogs and soliciting donations from parishioners. In March 2015, we received a matching grant from the St. Joseph Community Health Foundation and we began our ministry of Home Visits.

We perform hundreds of Home and Other In-Person Visits each year, representing many hours of service to the Minot community. We are all volunteers who visit our Friends in Need in teams of two. We pray with those we visit if they are comfortable with that. We have assisted individuals, families, young and old, homeowners, renters and those without homes. We coordinate assistance with local churches, nonprofits and government social service agencies. The needs have been many and varied. 

Most financial assistance is one time only. We are always happy to assist in finding other financial assistance programs or to assist in other ways. Some types of assistance we have provided:

• Prepaid basic cell phone
• basic household items and furniture
• emergency food and hygiene items
• assistance with obtaining medical prescriptions and eyeglasses
• emergency assistance with property tax, utility bills, rent and deposits
• assistance with Minot City Bus passes and Souris Basin tokens
• assistance with vehicle insurance or minor repairs so someone could get to work
• referrals to other community programs such as veterans’ assistance and food pantries
• clothing

“No work of charity is foreign to the Society” as we have discovered and we continue to work to fill in where other area agencies cannot.