Mercy Coalition

"He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." - Micah 6:8

The Mercy Coalition is a partnership of West Sacramento churches and faith-based organizations, working together to meet the needs of the homeless and poor in our city. Since September of 2013, the Coalition has provided bagged lunches every weekday of the year - a total of more than 13,000 lunches per year.

The Coalition had its first stirrings in 2010, when a fire destroyed the Broderick Christian Center's day shelter - a primary hub of services for many of the city's homeless. Local churches quickly organized themselves to provide daily meals for the homeless for six weeks that summer, with a lunch assembly line gathering each day at the Collings Teen Center, made up of volunteers from a variety of backgrounds and faith traditions.

In September of 2013, other non-profit funding dried up for providing homeless meals in West Sacramento. The Coalition quickly organized itself again, and in a matter of days had a multi-church system in place for getting 50 to 80 lunches a day out to the homeless population. That arrangement ultimately led to a pilot program in partnership with Yolo County and the City of West Sacramento, with the Coalition churches invited to serve lunches on County social services property each weekday. This created opportunities for nonprofit and county case workers to also extend services to these same clients.

By God's amazing grace and leading, the Coalition has been able to weave together resources from local food banks, the Broderick Christian Center, the Collings Teen Center, and the churches' own food stores to keep the lunches flowing. In 2014, the churches worked together to provide more than 16,000 lunches to the hungry in our city.

In November of 2014, the Coalition was privileged to be part of the innovative Bridge To Housing pilot project. The collaborative project, led by the county and City, helped 71 longtime riverside campers relocate to a local motel for 120 days of shelter and case-management services, as a means of creating a hopeful path to transitional permanent housing.