WHO We Are​

Catholic Charities of Idaho offers a variety of social services that improve lives, promote dignity, and build individual and family self-sufficiency. Founded in 2000, we prioritize service to those most in need, promote healthy family life, stable relationships, and social inclusion, offer culturally competent services to newcomer communities, and foster safety, trust, collaboration, and empowerment as the key guiding principles of our work with clients.
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Catholic Charities is a faith based social service organization founded on the social teachings of the Roman Catholic Church.  We offer high quality family and individual counseling services, immigration legal services, educational, skill building, and financial wellness services, and resource linkage, referral and support services. We strive to ensure service integration and care coordination for all we assist.  We seek partnership, collaboration, and association with those who share our values and mission of service.

Catholic Charities receives support from the generosity of donors, parishes, the annual Diocesan Catholic Appeal, the Idaho Catholic Foundation, grants, foundations and fund-raising efforts.  We offer services to all people, regardless of religion, age, gender, disability, race/ethnicity, income or background.

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Our MISSION

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Catholic Charities of Idaho engages individuals, families and communities to enhance human dignity and strengthen financial and emotional well-being.

Our VISION

​Catholic Charities of Idaho commits to alleviate, reduce, and end poverty for those we serve.

Our PRINCIPLES

Human Dignity

Catholic Charities affirms that each person is made in the image of God and has inherent dignity. Each person must be respected from conception to natural death. Each person is endowed with rights and duties. We affirm that each person served and engaged with our work will be held in great esteem and with great respect.

Common Good

Catholic Charities affirms that there is a universal destination of all created things, that all persons have the right to access all that they need in order to reach their fulfillment and that all persons have the concurrent obligation to work for the rights of others as well..

Subsidiarity

Catholic Charities affirms that decisions should be made at the lowest possible level, should involve those who are capable of participation in decision-making and who will be impacted by those decisions, and should empower those who are most in need. Concurrently, we commit to creating and renewing structures and institutions that provide assistance and aid, as required, appropriate and necessary. CCI, as a member of the civic society, affirms that we should actively participate in the public discourse at both the national and local community level, seeking justice for all, but especially for those who have no voice of their own. We affirm that we should both advocate and serve, advocating both for individuals and for just social structures.

Solidarity with the Poor

Catholic Charities affirms that the most poor and vulnerable persons and families have a special claim to our services and programs. We affirm that our staff and boards should engage those served to have representative voice in decisions influencing policies and programs. Accordingly, we affirm the need to create structures and processes for obtaining appropriate input from stakeholders. We commit ourselves to continue to be a voice with poor and vulnerable individuals and families in the public discourse.

Our APPROACH

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• We aim high and achieve real impact for those we serve.

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• We offer services that respect and support our clients as resourceful, resilient, and capable of forging pathways to success and personal fulfillment. Hope is our foundational service principle.

1. We give our professional staff the time, assistance, and resources they need to work effectively.


2. We engage in partnerships and alliances that knit together the good work of key providers and supporters to achieve deep collaboration and better service for those we assist.


3. We ask for more engagement and contribution from stakeholders who share our commitment to reducing and ending poverty, including our Board and staff, our donors and volunteers, our community partners, and our clients.


4. We are a learning organization that puts our work to the test. We continually assess and evaluate how our services help clients achieve clearly defined self-sufficiency benchmarks.

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Our VALUES

​Catholic Charities of Idaho’s values define the core of our agency and inspire the work that we do for and with those most in need. At the root of Catholic social teaching and our mission is the sanctity and dignity of human life.  The value of the human person transcends class, culture, income, intelligence, physical ability or appearance, economic productivity, social status, health condition or any other physical or external social measurement.  Life is sacred from conception to natural death.

Our faith traditional calls us to a preferential love for those who are impacted by poverty and marginalization. Catholic Charities upholds the common good in all of our work.  In our services, we not only work to assist people with their immediate needs, but to find long term solutions that will allow them to live a just and empowered way of life.

The foundation of all human society is rooted in the family.  At Catholic Charities we uphold the importance and dignity of the family and recognize it as a source of love, life and stability that helps its members, especially children, grow to their fullest potential.

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Truth

Catholic Charities affirms that transparency and accountability will always be pursued in our communication and work. We affirm the truth of the intrinsic dignity and worth of the human person as a social being and will witness to our Catholic identity in fulfilling our roles in Church and society.
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Freedom

Catholic Charities affirms that we will always assist our clients, staff and volunteers to live in socially responsible freedom, to exercise their authentic autonomy in light of objective truth and to actualize their inherent potential as beings created in the image and likeness of God. We will respect and affirm the autonomy of each organization/entity with whom we are in relationship.

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Justice

Catholic Charities affirms that it is a matter of justice that all clients have the right to self-actualization and to reach their potential as beings created in the image and likeness of God.  We affirm that all contracts and agreements and all relationships with stakeholders will be based on norms of justice. We affirm that we will work to expand and maintain diversity and excellence in our membership, board, leadership positions and staff. We affirm that we will continue to work to help eradicate racism and prejudice within our own organizations and in society at large.

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Love

Catholic Charities affirms that love – caritas – will be the chief identifying characteristic and element of our work and life.

Our Service PRIORITIES

We prioritize service to those most in need,
promote healthy family life, stable relationships, and social inclusion,
offer culturally competent services to newcomer communities,
and foster safety, trust, collaboration, and empowerment
​as the key guiding principles of our work.

A Strong Family and Healthy Community

CATHOLIC SOCIAL TEACHING

Catholic Charities of Idaho’s mission is rooted in the seven principles of Catholic Social Teaching, an ever-growing body of official Church documents that articulate the social message of the Gospel and lay a framework for how Catholics should put the principles of their faith into daily, faith-filled action on behalf of the Gospel.

Catholic Social Teaching is a central and essential element of our faith and is based on and inseparable from our understanding of human life and human dignity. Every human being is created in the image of God and redeemed by Jesus Christ, and therefore is invaluable and worthy of respect as a member of the human family. Every person, from the moment of conception to natural death, has inherent dignity and a right to life consistent with that dignity. Human dignity comes from God, not from any human quality or accomplishment.
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—from Catholic Social Teaching: Challenges and Directions

​Life and Dignity of the Human Person

​Belief in the inherent dignity of the human person is the foundation of all Catholic Social Teaching. Human life is sacred, and the dignity of the human person is the starting point for a moral vision for society. This principle is grounded in the idea that the person is made in the image of God. The person is the clearest reflection of God among us.

Call to Family, Community and Participation

The human person is both sacred and social. We realize our dignity and rights in relationship with others, in community. Human beings grow and achieve fulfillment in community. How we organize our society — in economics and politics, in law and policy — directly affects human dignity and the capacity of individuals to grow in community. The obligation to “love our neighbor” has an individual dimension, but it also requires a broader social commitment. Everyone has a responsibility to contribute to the good of the whole society, to the common good.

Rights and Responsibilities

Human dignity can be protected and a healthy community can be achieved only if human rights are protected and responsibilities are met. Every person has a fundamental right to life and a right to those things required for human decency – starting with food, shelter, clothing, employment, health care and education. Corresponding to these rights are duties and responsibilities — to one another, to our families and to the larger society.

Option for the Poor and Vulnerable

The moral test of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. The poor have the most urgent moral claim on the conscience of the nation. We are called to look at public policy decisions in terms of how they affect the poor. The “option for the poor” is not an adversarial slogan that pits one group or class against another. Rather it states that the deprivation and powerlessness of the poor wounds the whole community. A healthy community can be achieved only if its members give special attention to those with special needs, to those who are poor and on the margins of society.

The Dignity of Work and the Rights of Workers

The economy must serve people, not the other way around. Work is more than a way to make a living; it is a form of continuing participation in God’s creation. If the dignity of work is to be protected, then the basic rights of workers must be respected – the right to productive work, to decent and fair wages, to the organization and joining of unions, to private property and to economic initiative.

Solidarity

We are one human family, whatever our national, racial, economic and ideological differences. We are our brothers’ and sisters’ keepers, wherever they may be. Since loving our neighbor has global dimensions in a shrinking world, we are called to work globally for peace and justice.

Care for God’s Creation

​The goods of the earth are gifts from God, and they are intended by God for the benefit of everyone. There is a “social mortgage” that guides our use of the world’s goods, and we have a responsibility to care for these goods as stewards and trustees, not as mere consumers and users. How we treat the environment is a measure of our stewardship, a sign of our respect for the Creator. We are called to protect people and the planet, living our faith in relationship with all of God’s creation.

We encourage you to explore additional resources and educational opportunities
​related to Catholic Social Teaching.

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