NU partners with Heart, Love and Soul to assist community

Lewiston Porter Sentinel, April 18, 2009

Pictured from left are Sister Mary McCarrick, OSF, of Heart, Love and Soul; the Rev. Joseph L. Levesque, C.M., Niagara University president; Sister Barbara Pfohl, OSF, executive director of Heart, Love and Soul; Sister Candice Tucci, OSF, and Sister Dorothy Mueller, OSF from the Sisters of St. Francis at Stella Niagara.

Heart, Love and Soul Inc. and Niagara University have signed a partnership agreement to better aid those in the local community. The agreement provides Niagara students and staff with opportunities for service learning and strengthens Heart, Love and Soul now and for the future.

"We are excited about this partnership and the opportunity to assist Heart, Love and Soul in expanding its services to the community," said the Rev. Joseph L. Levesque, C.M., Niagara University president.

Heart, Love and Soul was founded in 1982 when the prayer group from Sacred Heart Parish in Niagara Falls saw members losing jobs in difficult economic times. The group offered a vacant grocery store at 15th Street and Pierce Avenue as a location for the food pantry. In later years, Heart, Love and Soul began to prepare meals for the hungry, serving them in various churches as space became available. In 2004, Heart, Love and Soul moved to a fully renovated building at 939 Ontario Ave., where the staff could cook and serve in one location and better fulfill its mission, which is to feed those in need and provide opportunities to improve their quality of life.

As a Vincentian university, Niagara draws its inspiration from St. Vincent de Paul, who organized his contemporaries to respond compassionately to people's basic needs.  That same mission lives at Heart, Love and Soul. 

"We immediately saw that the two organizations had the possibility of a mutually supportive relationship," said Marsha Sullivan, a member of the board of directors of Heart, Love and Soul and Niagara's board of trustees.

For more information, contact Sister Barbara Pfohl, executive director of Heart, Love and Soul, at 282-5687.