Kevin Kelly/Key photo From left, Central City School Fund Associate Director Melanie Martin, Stewardship and Development Director Tom Minges, Bishop Sullivan Center director Tom Turner and Catholic Charities Foundation director Paula Moss.

From the homeless shelter where she and her toddler son once lived, Mary (not her real name) could see the children at a nearby Catholic elementary school. The girls in their plaid jumpers and skirts and the boys in their white shirts and blue pants seemed so happy, so carefree and cared for, with their futures filled with possibilities.

She made a promise to her son, she told Melanie Martin, associate director of the Central City School Fund: "You will be going to that school."

Mary slowly pulled herself up to the ranks of the working poor. She now holds a job that puts a roof over their heads and food on their table. This fall, thanks to the generosity of people who give to the Central City School Fund, Mary's son is enrolled at the promised school.

Ralph, also not his real name, will definitely not be receiving an additional government check this summer. The one he does receive, a Social Security check, allows him to live meagerly and alone and, until a few weeks ago, not very comfortably when the weather heat index soars into triple digits.

Tom Turner, executive director of the Bishop Sullivan Center, personally delivered and installed the small window air-conditioner from the center's Project ElderCool that will make Ralph's life this summer more bearable.

Even though Turner had more stops to make that evening, he lingered for a moment as the small air-conditioner did its work in the tiny oven-like house to provide Ralph relief of another kind - relief from loneliness.

Project ElderCool, born during the killer heat wave of 1999, also exists because of the generosity of people who will never meet Ralph, but who may have literally saved his life.

Tom Minges, director of the diocesan Office of Stewardship and Development, said people who soon will be receiving federal income tax refund checks of up to $600 may have dozens of good uses for that money.

But among those uses are dozens of Catholic social service agencies across the diocese that find themselves in the same bind every summer: Demand for services goes up long after the peak giving season of the Christmas holidays has ended.

"People don't always realize that," said Paula Moss, director of the diocesan Catholic Charities foundation. "Some think that the needs are gone because it's not winter."

Moss said that many of the programs Catholic Charities offers are funded by contract with governments, with private donations picking up the difference. But a state budget crunch this year has meant drastic reductions in the state funds available to some of those programs.

One program that is facing sharp cutbacks is a program to provide training to prospective foster parents for children who have been made wards of the state.

"Our RFP (request for funding proposal) is due," she said. "We are going to put a new one in, but we may get half of what we got last year. We're going to continue to offer the training, but the ones who will really be hurt will be the children."

Moss also said that Catholic Charities is being beseiged by elderly people still reeling from last winter's heating bills who are looking for somewhere to turn.

Turner said the demand for utility assistance has remained so high, that Bishop Sullivan Center added volunteers to help answer phones.

He said that is because many government and utility-sponsored assistance programs have long been tapped out.

"We are getting swamped with people needing help with utility bills," Turner said. "What they are telling us is that no one else is helping."

Turner said that demand will only increase as winter approaches.

"A lot of families are simply going without gas and hot water during the summer. They will wait until the first cold day in October," he said. "If we think we are swamped now, wait until it gets cold."