{"id":738,"date":"2025-10-13T23:12:06","date_gmt":"2025-10-13T23:12:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/738\/"},"modified":"2025-10-13T23:12:06","modified_gmt":"2025-10-13T23:12:06","slug":"metropolitan-ministries-expands-holiday-outreach-to-pinellas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/738\/","title":{"rendered":"Metropolitan Ministries expands holiday outreach to Pinellas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0After providing a holiday tent assistance program in Tampa more than 40 years, Metropolitan Ministries is expanding its outreach and opening a tent in Pinellas County this season.<\/p>\n<p>What You Need To Know<\/p>\n<p>Metropolitan Ministries expands iconic holiday tent site to Pinellas County\u00a0<br \/>\n<br \/>The St. Petersburg location at Holy Cross Catholic Church is expected to serve more than 5,000 families<br \/>\n<br \/>Organization hiring for seasonal staff to help support holiday outreach efforts<\/p>\n<p>\u00a0\u201cWe\u2019ve done distributions out of the back of a truck and giving people food but this is more relational,\u201d said Tim Marks, Chief Strategy Advisor and Former CEO of Metropolitan Ministries. \u201cMy role is to take what we\u2019ve done in Tampa (and) make sure we do our best here in Pinellas to serve.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The organization will offer hope, Marks says, to more than 5,000 families the organization is expected to serve.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSome are struggling still from the hurricanes from last year. Others have economic storms and other storms of life that they\u2019re facing. We want to bring hope and happiness to families over the holiday season,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>Families <a href=\"https:\/\/www.metromin.org\/holiday-central\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">can start registering online Oct. 20<\/a> for the tent that helps people through the Thanksgiving and Christmas season.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cYou shop for the food you like for your family. You pick out the toys. It\u2019s not Metropolitan Ministries that\u2019s providing the toys; you want to give mom and dad the dignity of providing toys for their kids,\u201d said Marks.<\/p>\n<p>Holy Cross Catholic Church in St. Petersburg says parishioners are also excited about the expansion and ready to volunteer.<\/p>\n<p>Metropolitan Ministries is also <a href=\"https:\/\/metromin.org\/careers\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">hiring for several temporary positions<\/a>\u00a0to help support what it calls Tampa Bay\u2019s largest outreach initiative serving families in crisis over Thanksgiving and Christmas.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019ve been seeing about a 15% increase in seniors struggling and needing help because they\u2019re on fixed income. Their rent\u2019s gone up, their food costs have gone up, utilities have gone up,\u201d said Marks.<\/p>\n<p>While setup is still in progress, the tent will soon be filled with people serving the community.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014\u00a0After providing a holiday tent assistance program in Tampa more than 40 years, Metropolitan Ministries&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1188,1011,1013,1191,1186,1192,1190,1187,115,596,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,1189,835],"class_list":["post-738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-homelessness","tag-app-human-interest","tag-app-latest-human-interest-stories","tag-christmas","tag-holidays","tag-homelessness","tag-human-interest","tag-melissa-eichman","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-thanksgiving","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}