Our Mission and Outreach Programs

First Presbyterian Church is pleased to participate in the following outreach programs, many of which are local and welcome your hands-on support:

Tools for Teachers -- is our newest effort to stock a school supply closet for teachers at Park View Elementary School. The supplies are purchased from Mission offerings made on the second Sunday of each month. Volunteers are needed to donate, purchase, and deliver supplies periodically throughout the year. Future plans are to expand the mission to provide volunteers to read to the children, to participate in the school's career day, and to provide other mentoring opportunities.

Portsmouth Volunteers for the Homeless (PVH) Winter Shelter -- in partnership with over 53 houses of faith in Portsmouth, Chesapeake, and Suffolk, provides dinner and a safe, warm place for men and women to sleep from mid-November through mid-May. FPC partners with Green Acres Presbyterian to host one week of the shelter a year. The shelter guests are housed for the week at FPC and Green Acres provides the evening meal. Volunteers are primarily needed to stay overnight to chaperone and assist the shelter guests.

Peace, Love and a Bag of chips (PLBC) -- during the summer months when the shelter is not in operation, FPC and partners (Simonsdale, Community, and Green Acres Presbyterian Churches) prepares simple bagged suppers on Sunday afternoons for distribution to the area homeless the same evening. Volunteers are needed to distribute the bagged meals in the church’s courtyard on Sunday evenings around 5 pm from the beginning of June through the summer.

The Women's Circle of the church supports many outreach programs throughout the year, from stuffing stockings for children, assembling holiday meal ingredients for Edmarc to receiving monetary gifts for blankets and collecting items for hygiene and clean up kits for Church World Service.