terry angelotti

Fighting Poverty, One 'Rice Bowl' at a Time

By Gretchen R. Crowe
HERALD Staff Writer
(From the Issue of 3/1/07)

If your morning Starbucks money is being transferred into a purple cardboard “Rice Bowl” for the next five weeks, Terry Angelotti, the newly appointed diocesan program coordinator for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development (CCHD), will be the one making sure a small portion of it goes toward helping a local neighbor in need.
Twenty-five percent of the money that is donated this Lent through Operation Rice Bowl, CRS’ Lenten program to raise money for development projects and education efforts, will be used to fight poverty within the boundaries of the Arlington Diocese; the other 75 percent will go toward national programs.
Another responsibility of Angelotti’s position — formerly staffed by volunteers, including the late Dick Fallert — will be to oversee the use of funds collected from the annual CCHD collection. Grant applications for this money are available through Angelotti’s office and are due March 19.
Angelotti’s road to the Arlington Chancery began in her teenage years when she moved from Annandale, where she and her family were parishioners at St. Michael Church, to Nebo, N.C., a rural town in the western part of the state.
“Growing up in Annandale it was very economically the same,” Angelotti said. In North Carolina, “all at once I went to school with students who were on the free lunch program and with students who flew to New York to go shopping.”
Enlightened by this economic diversity, Angelotti immersed herself into the Catholic Campus Ministry program at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, N.C. While there, she learned to incorporate prayer and reflection into service work.
“I just felt led to make a difference in the world,” she said. “I really hooked on the idea of social justice: the Gospel call to care for the poor, the orphan and the widow.”
When she graduated in 1990, Angelotti accepted a job in the Diocese of Cleveland, Ohio, doing social justice work.
“I knew four people in the whole state,” she said, so she joined a singles group through which she met a roommate, her husband, Neil, and another good friend who was a bridesmaid at her wedding and is godmother to one of her children.
The Angelottis married in 1994, and their oldest son, Kyle, was born a year later, followed by Emily and Brendan.
When Neil, who works for the Federal Aviation Administration, was offered a job in Chicago, Angelotti began volunteering for the archdiocesan CCHD committee.
“I was living in the suburbs and caught up in small children and play groups,” she said. Her work with CCHD got her into the city and working on eliminating its poverty.
“I felt like it kept me balanced so I didn’t disconnect from what is a lot of people’s reality,” she said.
Angelotti spent four years volunteering in Chicago, then took a part-time job for the archdiocese as the parish sharing associate, where she matched upper income parishes with lower income parishes so that they could best benefit from one another.
In 2001, Neil accepted another job offer, this time in Washington, and the Angelottis bought a house in Centreville and became parishioners at St. Mary of Sorrows Church in Fairfax. Angelotti dove into the parish’s budding youth ministry program and also began volunteering as a committee member with the Arlington Diocese’s CCHD program.
“Youth ministry and social justice are my two loves as far as the Church goes,” she said.
When the diocese created the part-time program coordinator position, Angelotti applied and was accepted in the fall. She began work at the start of the year and has already developed a local application for CCHD grants, which the diocese is using in place of the national template.
“We’re trying to create a more simple form to make it easier for people to apply,” she said.
Grant applications for the money currently being collected through Operation Rice Bowl will be available during the fall.
Angelotti is also developing a committee to publicize the grants, review them as they come in, make site visits to learn more about the groups that are applying, and make recommendations to Arlington Bishop Paul S. Loverde as to whom should receive funding.
The committee will also be responsible for educating the public about global poverty. Instead of parishioners simply giving away money, Angelotti hopes they will learn about what they are giving toward and will “act as a result of that learning.”
The committee’s work will be promoted through parish presentations, speakers, Lenten soup suppers and talking to social justice groups. But Angelotti doesn’t want it to stop there.
“We would like to think beyond social justice groups to mother’s groups, youth ministry groups, senior citizens,” she said. “It doesn’t need to be a peace and justice committee at a parish.”
Angelotti said she loves her work because the CCHD and CRS grants empower the poor.
“It doesn’t give out, it gives up,” she said. “Really, it’s a result of our faith that we are able to do that.”
For information on CCHD grant applications or Operation Rice Bowl contact Angelotti at 703/841-3839 or tangelotti@ccda.net.

Gretchen R. Crowe can be reached at gcrowe@catholicherald.com.