Davisburg is home to a new Knights of Columbus Council, the Divine Mercy Council, based out of Divine Mercy Parish in Davisburg.
The parish started in November of 2009. Since then, the council has grown in size and has done a number of things to help the local community.
The idea for starting the council came from Fr. Budde who wanted a Knights of Columbus branch at Divine Mercy. They needed 30 members to start in 2009, and the group has already grown to include 51 men.
Divine Mercy Council’s Grand Knight Mike Zubalik said it isn’t hard to get men from Divine Mercy because they want to be involved. In fact, last year they got nine new members.
The group has been doing a lot more, however, than getting more members. They have done food drives for the community food bank. In addition, they built a bridge in the downtown Davisburg park.
They worked together with the Optimist Club to put three new welcome signs at the entrances to downtown Davisburg. Finally, they have been volunteering their time and services at the Heritage Festival the last couple of years.
This year, they will be hosting a beer tent at the festival, with live music playing next to it. The tent is new to the festival and highly anticipated.
All these different things take money to run and the Knights take care of that through fund raisers. Every year they do a fund raiser at the Auto-Show and Autorama, which gives them enough money to put their plans into action. In addition, they donate money to charities and to help seminarians with college costs.
Zubalik said they are able to do all of this because of the nature of their council.
‘It’s a young council, it’s a vibrant council with a lot of active members who are willing to pitch in and help the community and parish at a moment’s notice and we dot that through the leadership of Fr. Budde.?
In the future, the Knights plan to continue helping Davisburg. They work closely with Springfield Township Parks and Recreation, and provide manpower for projects or clean ups that take place downtown.