Marty Reilly is full of infectious positivity. With a huge smile and knack for helping out on short notice, she’s established herself as a veteran volunteer at the Catholic Charities foster care and adoption program in Phoenix.
Reilly creates training booklets for foster care and adoption families. For the last four years, she’s been assisting foster care and adoption administrative assistant Sally Gramke.
Volunteer Supports Foster Care Workers
“The time Marty spends at the copier preparing booklets for our foster and adoption training classes, dramatically affects my day-to-day tasks,” said Gramke. “It enables me to return phone calls, answer emails and do other tasks, so I can reach potential foster parents. This directly impacts the children in foster care and our program, not to mention the positive effect it has on my own personal stress level.”
Catholic Charities foster care and adoption program serves approximately 200 families in the Phoenix area, which keeps the case managers and staff busy. However, even with the high workload, Marty sees personal connections.
Volunteer Sees Rewards of Work
“Working in Sally’s department has been so rewarding. Seeing all the hard work Sally and the case workers perform has been eye-opening,” said Marty. “The love and concern they have for their foster families and foster children is remarkable.”
From Christmas parties to trips to amusement parks, there is always an appreciation activity going on.
Foster care is a cause that is close to Marty's heart. At age 65 and a widow, Marty is a transplant from Florida and decided to get involved at her church, St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Chandler, Ariz. As a retired administrative assistant, she decided to use her skill set at Catholic Charities.
“I don’t know of a better way to express love for God and His mandate to us to serve our fellow man. Who is more important than innocent children in need of love and a family?” Marty asked. “Volunteers are critical to the good-working of society. Catholic Charities and other charitable organizations simply do not have the money or resources to hire enough staff to do the work they are trying to do.”
As her volunteer work directly impacts foster children in Arizona, she says she wouldn’t give up “my time or experience of having worked at Catholic Charities for anything!”
Do you want to get involved? Learn more about our volunteer opportunities at Catholic Charities.
