FRIENDS OF FAMILIES
Update, December 2025

MISSION STATEMENT: The FRIENDS OF FAMILIES is a revised name of the FRIENDS OF THE REDFORD COMMUNITY. It is a charitable activity of the St. Innocent of Alaska Monastic (Religious) Community, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt corporation first established in 1988. The purpose of FRIENDS, started in December 2022, is to help families in need in Redford, one family at a time, and is a team-effort supported by various donors — individuals and businesses. In addition, the charity also provides occasional aid to the Fisher Elementary School, whose principal referred us to our one “adopted” struggling family. 95% of our work has been to minister to this one family, not just with Christmas gifts, but throughout the year, during 2024 and 2025, ministering with regular financial, emotional and social support, especially buying food every month, clothing, various other expenses, and preventing utility shut-offs.

ABOUT OUR CHARITY: The St. Innocent Monastic Community first started this FRIENDS charitable work in the Fall of 2022 by buying about 15 Christmas gifts and giving them to the principal of the Fisher Elementary School (north of W. Chicago, east of Beech Day), to give to needy school families, so the parent/grandparent could give the presents to their children on Christmas. Sister Ioanna immediately discovered that the Fisher School had some needs, and when she received her first $100 donation, she established the “FRIENDS of Fisher Elementary School.” When asking the principal to refer an especially needy family, the principal told her about the “Grannie-Mom family, whom FRIENDS basically “adopted,” when the grand-baby was still very young (Born 8/29/2022.) Then, Sister Ioanna amended the name to “FRIENDS of the Redford Community,” because at first, in addition to helping families in need like Grannie-Mom’s, she envisioned building a greater sense of unity and comm-unity in Redford, by having community-oriented activities to create a type of “One Redford” as first envisioned by the Redford Ministerial Alliance around 2016. Throughout the summer and fall of 2023, Sister Ioanna bought toys and recreational items when on sale, and saved them up for Christmas. Prior to Christmas, she brought them to Grannie-Mom’s family and met them for the first time, giving most of the gifts she had been buying to the 2 boys, in the 4th and 5th grades at the time. Then in 2024, as she got to know the family better, she took the boys shopping, to give them a chance to go some place during vacation, since their Mom has no car. She was amazed at how well-behaved and respectful they were, without a single hostile word or action for 3 hours of being together. The boys love having a chance to go to stores like Walmart and look around at things, especially electronics and toys. As of November 2025, when she took them shopping again, she realized how important it is for them to have a chance to occasionally go someplace other than school, and she would like to try to take them someplace once a month, when possible. (She hopes to take the whole family to the zoo next summer, 2026.)
As Sister Ioanna’s relation with the “adopted” family developed, and she spent much of her available time in shopping for Grannie-Mom and helping her family, Sister realized in the fall of 2025, that this charitable work is all she could handle. Thus, as of November and December 2025, she has realized that the expectation of helping the Redford community as a whole is unrealistic, and is thus changing the name again to more accurately reflect what is actually being done. Retaining the word “FRIENDS,” she is changing the name to “FRIENDS of Families,” unless (or until) a better name is suggested. (Any thoughts/suggestions???) This is intended to have the double meaning of referring to supporters as friends, and the recipients of aid as friends.

UPDATE ABOUT OUR “ADOPTED” FAMILY: The family consists of a struggling retired grandmother, (who I call “Grannie-Mom,” because although she is their grandma, she functions as their mother, and the children call her Mom). Grannie-Mom is 68, and is semi-disabled. She is raising 3 of her grandchildren, 2 boys, now aged 12 and 13½, who have lived with their “Grannie-Mom” their whole lives, and is their legal guardian, plus a toddler girl, now 3, who she has raised alone since birth, and whose adoption was finally completed in May 2025. The oldest and youngest are special-needs children. Grannie-Mom has done a magnificent job of creating a truly loving, caring and stable family. Without her, the children would be in state foster-care. After Grannie-Mom’s husband died 8 years ago, she has constantly struggled financially to feed and care for these 3 children on her meager retirement income of $1800 a month, plus about $1200 for 2 of the children who are ‘special-needs.’ $3000 is simply insufficient to feed and clothe a family of 4, and pay the rent and utilities and all the other basic living expenses. Thus, she regularly has to chose between feeding her 3 hungry children, helping her older daughter and her 2 young teen granddaughters, or paying utilities. But Grannie-Mom’s children are always well-fed, well-bathed, well-rested, with clean clothes, and generally well-behaved. The older 7th grade boy is moderately autistic, but because he is such a loving, caring person, he has been chosen by his school to mentor a more severely autistic child. The younger boy is highly gifted in fixing things and is usually working on repairing bicycles, lawn equipment, or anything that is broken, and loves working with engines and anything mechanical. He is also very artistic, likes to read, and does a great deal to help his Mom and the family. The baby is now 3 and is doing well in learning her numbers, letters and words. Grannie-Mom’s specialty is pre-school education, so she is busy doing pre-school home-schooling with her beloved toddler.

UPDATE ABOUT OUR CHARITABLE WORK: Throughout 2024 and 2025 we have been able to do a great deal to help this wonderful family, thanks to the kindness and generosity of our team of donors. We bought food, clothes, paid past-due utilities, and helped in countless ways for this one family to survive. (Grannie-Mom also at times needs to feed and care for 2 other teenage granddaughters.) To show how effective she is with her family, her house also serves as a “safe-house” for lots of other neighborhood children, some of whose parents work and they know that their child/children are safe at Grannie-Mom’s. Whenever Sister Ioanna has been there, there are always lots of other kids around, coming and going, and playing with Grannie’s boys,.

Right now, at Christmas 2025, additional donations from individuals, foundations, and small and large businesses, would be most appreciated, so that we can continue to buy food to feed this wonderful needy family, and pay for the Christmas gifts that the FRIENDS Charity have bought for them. Grannie-Mom is extremely grateful and most appreciative, and gives great thanks to the Lord for all the assistance that our FRIENDS Charity has been able to provide for them. This includes the emotional and social support of Sister Ioanna, with whom she can speak about her frustrations and stresses and challenges that she constantly faces. The Lord certainly sent us to help this marvelous family. And Sister Ioanna appreciates that caring people are working together with her as a team of family friends, to help this family with periodic monetary and in-kind gifts, especially Campbell’s snacks, new school-year supplies, and includes left-over food from church dinners. It is wonderful that thanks to such caring, generous people, we have been able to prevent last-minute shut-offs of water, gas, electricity, and phones/TV, and to enable both boys to participate in the 5th grade “Spring camp” before graduating elementary school and going to middle school, in 2024 and 2025. Each month Sister Ioanna buys several hundreds of dollars worth of food, paper goods, laundry supplies, pull-up diapers, plus clothing, shoes, boots for ever-growing children, and occasionally toys . For the baby’s birthday on August 29th, our Friends Charity enabled Grannie-Mom to celebrate the finalization of the baby’s adoption, and to have a special 3rd birthday party outside in their front yard, which Sister Ioanna attended. FRIENDS supplied pizza, ice cream, lots of decorations, tables and chairs, and a stuffed Minnie and Micky Mouse. The family is now awaiting the finalization of the official adoption of the 2 boys, easier now that the baby’s adoption is complete. As Legal Guardian, the guardianship has had to be repeated each year, and the social worker some years wouldn’t get the paper work submitted in time, and it would lapse, which has caused many problems.

For Christmas, in addition to Grannie-Mom’s family, we are also helping a neighbor-friend of Grannie-Mom’s, who is also a grandma raising her grandson, with 2 gifts and food. Also, as per a request on 12/5 by the local Fisher Elementary School, we are helping a new family with 3 young children, with 6 Christmas gifts.

Please see the separate fund-raising page for a summary of our work and a detailed list of what we have bought as presents, and a request for donations to pay for the gifts, plus donations of gift-cards.

Be assured that 100% of donations are used for this charitable work of our monastery, and not a penny is used for anything else. Meticulous records of donations and receipts of expenses are carefully maintained.
We are revising our website, www.StInnocentMonastery.org, to include our new charitable work.