Parish House welcoming new director
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BUCKHANNON -- The Upshur Cooperative Parish House welcomed its new executive director, Isaac Casto, during a recent ceremony.
Casto had been serving as acting director since July, and was officially handed the reins on Oct. 1. He replaces Kristin Wilkerson, who departed for a position at West Virginia Wesleyan College.
Casto previously served as assistant director and finance manager at Parish House, and did some work with the organization while he was attending college in Buckhannon.
"I had some history with the Parish House before I started working here," Casto said. "I went to college at Wesleyan and they had the Bonner Scholar Program, which is a service-based scholarship, and I ended up doing three years of my service at the Parish House.
"Through the school year I would work in the food pantry, and in the summer I would stay and work in their home repair program."
Before joining the Parish House as a full-time employee, Casto worked as a history teacher in Upshur County, and before that was an accountant with Chesapeake Energy.
"Service has been very transformative to my life. It's rewarding and nice to be able to contribute to a greater good," Casto said. "It's nice when the skills that I have, and I can do, can benefit someone else. And that's what the Parish House is about, it's about people from all backgrounds coming together to contribute what they can."
The Parish House has been helping low-income families in Upshur County since 1992.
"Our main focus is helping with food insecurity and housing instability in Upshur County," Casto said. "We serve probably 75 to 100 people a week through our food pantry, and we also do things like utility assistance. That's kind of our day-to-day focus, but we also do some special programming, like now we are gearing up for our Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday food packages."
Casto said Parish House also offered a backpack distribution this year, supplying more than 900 school supplies to Upshur County students at the start of the school year.
"While our day-to-day focus is food insecurity and housing, we are also doing some special programming outreach into the community," said Casto, who has an undergraduate degree in marketing, a master's in business administration, and a master's in education from West Virginia Wesleyan College.
The Parish House is open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. It is also open on Thursday evening from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.
The Clothes Closet, the organization's Thrift Store, is open Mondays through Saturdays from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.. For more information, call 304-471-2290.