Our Mission
The Denver Inner City Parish loves and supports individuals and families in our community, empowering them to break the cycle of poverty.

Our Vision
DICP envisions that our community has the economic opportunities, tools, and resources to lead healthy and successful lives.

Current Programs:
• Food Pantry - currently serving at our brick-and-mortar site once a week and 6 mobile pantry sites operating on a client-choice model
•Care Navigation - providing help with the SNAP application, emergency materials like diapers & hygiene, and Utility Assistance
•Veggie Rx - Education on healthy eating, cooking, and shopping and provides gift cards to those who finish the program
•Greens-N-Grains Food Truck - giving free healthy food to kids after school to give a healthier, free option besides fast food and convenience stores
•Parish Seniors - providing transportation to congregant meals and social activities, bi-weekly food box deliveries, and in-person gathering and activities
•Immigrant Center - helping noncitizens with free legal advice, help with documents, ID, utilities assistance, DACA and asylum

We Are the Community We Serve
Denver Inner City Parish (DICP) is participant driven and has worked in the community since 1960. DICP believes that inclusion is our strength and incorporates the perspectives of our participants to inform our programs. We are a community of diverse ages, gender identities, races, sexual orientations, physical and mental abilities, ethnicities, and perspectives. We are a community committed to environmental sustainability and justice.
Many of our staff and board members are previous participants because it is vital for DICP’s work to reflect the experiences of those we serve. DICP believes diversity is essential to world-building and serving our community. DICP offers programming to individuals and families who are marginalized. There is power in the margin. Together, we build community through social justice, anti-racism, and cultural responsiveness. We help all. We welcome all.

In serving our mission to empower our community to break the cycle of poverty, we have built partnerships with other organizations across the Denver metro area to ensure that when we don't offer a service our participants need, we know who to send them to and can tell them what kind of experience they can expect. All of our programs have a mobile outreach aspect to them, so we work closely to build trust with the other organizations for whom we provide programming. Because our programming is so diverse in itself, we can also act as a conduit to participants so that they have a one-stop shop for many of their needs.

Due to the tripling of people looking for services of food pantries in our community, we all can help each other as much as possible to not only feed everyone in need, but to give them a dignified, empowered path toward stability. Because our pantry is only open one day a week, we are always looking for connections with other pantries who understand the importance of giving our neighbors an opportunity to get the food that will not only nourish their bodies, but minds and souls as well. Being able to connect with each other as organizations can help us know who to send our participants to when we can't help them with food on a day when our pantry isn't open. We also love to bring our pools of participants together to create a stronger sense of community and support. When we bring our different programs that are not directly involved with food to the pantry, we can see a distinct feeling in our participants that they feel taken care of, and that we're not just here to give a hand out but a hand up.

I'm proposing that a care navigator from DICP comes to your pantry distributions 1-4 times a month to hold a 'SNAPplication Station.' As a partner of the SNAP PEAS program with Hunger Free Colorado, we have pledged to submit applications for SNAP in for those who do not have the knowledge, encouragement, or access to technology to do it themselves. Our Care Navigation team prides itself on providing compassionate, stress-free help with this daunting application so that people can overcome the barriers that keep them from accessing food assistance. On one's own, the application can take upwards of two hours and feel invasive, but with our help, it can take as little as ten minutes, and we show applicants which parts of the application they may skip or save for a later stage so they can feel more at ease. While helping participants with the application, care navigators open opportunities for other PEAK benefits and our other services, including receiving hygiene, diapers and other baby supplies, bus passes, and utility assistance with Xcel bills through Energy Outreach Colorado.

If this service would fit Joy's Kitchen's needs, we would ask for help promoting the service to anyone who is planning on coming to the pantry distribution.

This partnership could last as long as there is a need for help with SNAP applications, and could flex in scale according to demand. We could also see how appropriate it would be for the food pantries themselves to collaborate in making sure that we sustainably and responsibly distribute food to those in need while reducing waste. Collaborating would be a great chance to cross promote our services to our respective participants and donors. Hope we can help each other out!