ST. CHARLES, MO. — After they packed boxes with goods, loaded the boxes onto carts, pushed the carts across the street and carried their cargo down to the basement food panty at St. Peter Catholic Church, the three dozen or so SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital — St. Charles and Wentzville, Missouri, staffers looked around as if to say: “What next?”

Within a few minutes they unloaded and stocked the shelves with the hundreds of items they had collected: boxes of cereal, granola bars, macaroni and cheese, and peanut butter packets, cans of soup and tuna, cheese-and-cracker snack packs, and more.

Afterward, they stacked the empty boxes and wheeled the carts back across the street. Another Community Benefit Functional Friday had concluded.

The gatherings are the brainchild of Dr. L. Kristy Haggett, vice president of medical affairs and chief medical officer at SSM Health St. Joseph Hospital. The hospital’s campuses are in suburbs of St. Louis.

Haggett said she came up with the idea for the quarterly events after seeing how engaged the staff were during the food distributions that the hospital and others within the St. Louis-based health system host a couple of times a year.

“They wanted to participate,” she said. “We even had one that was in the freezing cold, and we had so many staff members out in the parking lot doing the food distribution. I saw how it increased morale.”

Learning and doing
The hospital already had Functional Friday learning events every other week. Those events, which are typically about 10 minutes long, focus on staff readiness. For example, one event was on the need for units to be prepared in the event of a power outage, including by having functioning flashlights. Afterward, the workers were sent back to their departments and encouraged to check their flashlights.

Haggett said Community Benefit Functional Fridays are a takeoff of those events, but with the focus on outside efforts that the hospital supports. Beginning last year, once a quarter on a Friday morning, the hospital welcomes a representative of a local charity or public service group to give a brief talk about the organization’s work. SSM Health St. Joseph — St. Charles and Wentzville staff are invited to attend. Afterward, the staffers take part in a related hands-on project.

Representatives of Crisis Nursery St. Charles and of Sts. Joachim and Ann Care Service, which helps families in need of emergency aid, have been among past speakers.

The speaker on March 7 was Jan Haug, a longtime volunteer with the conference of the St. Vincent de Paul Society based at St. Peter Catholic Church in St. Charles. Haug discussed the origins of the society, noting that its first American conference was formed in St. Louis in 1845.

St. Peter Catholic Church is part of the Archdiocese of St. Louis, which now has 140 conferences. The St. Peter one dates to 1887.

“Our mission is to serve people that don’t have money,” Haug said. “People who are hungry. They are worried about their electricity and water being shut off. People who are threatened with eviction. People who are really losing hope.”

‘We go to their homes’
St. Vincent de Paul Society volunteers at St. Peter monitor a hotline and then decide how best to help the callers. “We don’t make them come to an office,” Haug said. “We don’t make them fill out forms to qualify for anything. What we do is we go to their homes.”

Last year, the volunteers made 487 home visits. The aid they provided was funded in large part by the church, which in 2024 donated $132,000 to the charity. Haug said 98% of donations “goes right back out the door.”

“We are told to be traditionally poor ourselves, which means: Don’t hoard your money. If somebody gives you a donation, use it on somebody who needs it, not you,” Haug said.

Haug detailed the many ways the charity assists those in need, including with rental assistance, car repairs, and medical bills as well as by providing furniture, bedding, gas cards, tents and other goods.

The food pantry that SSM Health St. Joseph — St. Charles and Wentzville workers helped stock is run by the charity. It is mainly for people in crisis. Last year, it served more than 400 clients on an emergency basis, Haug said. One Saturday a month the pantry opens its doors to anyone. People can peruse the shelves and fill a box with whatever they need or want.

“People come in and they say, ‘Thank you for treating us this way. It’s fun to shop and not be judged,’” Haug said.

Mission demonstrated
Kacie Urbeck, pharmacy operations manager, was among the SSM Health St. Joseph — St. Charles and Wentzville staffers who listened to Haug. She said she tries to attend every Community Benefit Functional Friday. She enjoys learning about the work of local charities.

“I loved this,” she said of Haug’s discussion. “I didn’t know all the things that St. Vincent de Paul brings to the community.”

Jake Brooks, SSM Health St. Joseph — St. Charles and Wentzville president, was also in Haug’s audience. He joined afterward in packing and delivering goods to the food pantry. The items that went into the boxes had been collected from staffers over a few weeks.

Brooks said the quarterly events are just one of many ways, besides providing exceptional health care, that the hospital demonstrates its Catholic mission to reveal the healing presence of God.

“Sometimes it’s the simple acts of being able to serve others that helps us to get back to our roots and who we are,” Brooks said.

Haggett said she hopes the events help employees better understand the scope of the work done by charities that they and the hospital support and the need for those services in the community.

“Bringing those people in, they can educate us and we can learn about their resources,” she said. “It gives, I think, all of us more of an awareness of what’s going on in our community. It’s really nice to know what you’re contributing to, to see where it goes, to hear about the people that they serve.”