The St. Vincent de Paul Church has been serving the families and community members in East Baltimore since 1841. Baltimore’s oldest parish church in continuous use, St. Vincent de Paul Church – fondly known as “St. V.’s” – also has a deep history of serving the Perkins Home (now Perkins Square) community and City Springs Elementary / Middle School, one of the first neighborhood conversion charter schools for Baltimore Curriculum Project (BCP).
St. V.’s has been caring for City Springs in numerous, impactful ways:
- For the past nine years, several St. V.’s parishioners, mostly retirees, have been volunteering in City Springs classrooms. For the 2024-2025 school year, 12 volunteers worked one on one with students for at least one half-day per week.
- The church also ensures that every City Springs Scholar has free books to call their own and take home. Every year, St. V. ‘s donates approximately 2,000 books to the students, half at Christmastime, and half at the end of the school year.
- During the holidays, the congregation also donates hundreds of pairs of gloves, scarves, and winter wear.
- Through the St. Vincent de Paul Church Food Pantry, the church donates 50 or more full Christmas dinners to families needing them.
In April 2025, the St. V.’s congregation made an unprecedented generous donation of $55,000 to City Springs for the enrichment of each student. This transformational gift is shaping what it means to embrace learning outside the classroom for each grade at City Springs. The church has stipulated that the gift be used for what it calls “bonus experiences” – field trips to Baltimore-region cultural and educational places like the Maryland Zoo and day trips to New York City, Philadelphia, Outward Bound experiences, and more.
“Our mission as a community is to show God’s love to all our neighbors in Jonestown, Perkins Square, and surrounding neighborhoods”, explains Joe Cronyn, a parishioner and City Springs classroom volunteer in Ms. Bartholme’s 4th grade classroom. “Our congregation believes in investing in the future of its local community, in its young people in particular. Our recent gift to City Springs will provide age-appropriate and world-expanding experiences, which the school could otherwise not afford.”
Thank you, St. Vincent de Paul’s Church, for your remarkable generosity and enduring commitment to improving the lives and inspiring the futures of the students, families, and larger City Springs community!
Visit stvchurch.org to learn more about St. V.’s.