Thank you for your generous support! In 2024, the Great Turning Catholic Worker community in Madison…

• Provided short-term housing for 21 guests, including three families, giving them a community of support and a path to move toward renting apartments on their own.
• Shared meals and camaraderie at potlucks and roundtable discussions about important topics of our time.
• Installed a food forest of native and edible plants, shrubs, and trees.
• Celebrated a year of operation for the Great Turning Catholic Worker’s house of hospitality.

Please help the Great Turning Catholic Worker provide housing for more families in 2025 and continue our work to foster community, by sharing financially what you can.

A message from one of the families who stayed at the GTCW house:

"Living in the house helped us restore our family so much, find peace of mind, and look for a way to move forward. It helped us restore our children’s emotions by about 70% after all we went through to get here. Feeling that we had a home again, . . .  Through you, we have met wonderful people who continue helping us with essential information so that we can keep improving day by day. There are so many things that, as I said, wouldn’t fit in writing."

What’s Ahead

As we look to the year ahead, it’s likely that current guests will move out in January into their own apartment. We will then welcome in another family and help them to get settled, register their kids in school, and assist with any other urgent and important needs. 

The house itself needs a new A/C unit before next summer. To reduce carbon emissions, it is our hope to be able to raise enough funds to put in a heat pump in the spring. Other financial needs include having just over $50,000 left on the land contract from our former neighbor who sold us the house and provided a personal loan, as well as some other interest-free loans from friends and family. We are hopeful that with the financial support of the wider community, we can pay off the land contract in the next 2-3 years.

Our monthly operating expenses include a mortgage payment (land contract, $750/month), utilities, and property insurance. We are very grateful to folks making sustaining financial contributions that go towards these monthly expenses. We are grateful to folks bringing meals - you make possible so many connections which happen naturally over a shared meal. We so appreciate folks who are part of this community who seem to just ‘show up’! You have become a vital part of this community by your presence. When you share yourselves, you connect with those around you, and you bring us all together. We’re grateful to be participating in the Great Turning with you!

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We all need a home, a shelter, a place to live, to sleep and rest, to eat and to love our family. Those of us fortunate enough to have a roof over our heads and food in our fridge wonder how we can share this incredible privilege with those who, because of life circumstances, don't enjoy these same basic benefits. Daily, we may encounter people who are asking for our help. Some have come to our land seeking a new start. Others, born and raised here, have simply fallen on hard times. Their plight tugs at our hearts. How can we respond with love and compassion? What can we offer them?

With your pledge of financial support, Great Turning Catholic Worker, Inc. offers temporary housing to those facing similar challenges. On June 2, 2023, we closed on the purchase of a 3-bedroom home located on the west side of Madison. The house is managed by Andrea and Justin, who live in the house next door. (Click here to meet Andrea, Justin and their kids.) Our work in this home is centered around offering hospitality to those in need of housing, particularly refugees, families with children, women and mothers.

Your donations will be used for the purchase and maintenance of this Catholic Worker House of Hospitality. For more information, visit our website: https://gtcw.org/

For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, a stranger and you welcomed me, naked and you clothed me, ill and you cared for me, in prison and you visited me.

Great Turning Catholic Worker, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) non-profit (public charity). Donors can deduct contributions they make under IRC Section 170. Our Federal ID number is 92-3450863. No goods or services are exchanged for donations. Please contact us if you have any questions - email Dennis Noonan at: madcatworker@gmail.com.