By Eliza Ridgeway

JOE HU/TOWN CRIER Stewart Wobber is president of the Interfaith Network for Community Help (INCH), based in downtown Los Altos.

Los Altos Hills resident Stewart Wobber has a new take on Christian charity: It takes all kinds.

As president of the Los Altos-based Interfaith Network for Community Help (INCH), Wobber organizes volunteer communities of Protestants, Catholics, Mormons, Jews and Universalists, all in service to their neighbors.

“If we can bring the faiths together, God’s people, we can make things happen,” Wobber said. “The Good Samaritan wasn’t the religious guy. The religious man went on by. The Good Samaritan is the person we’re looking for. It doesn’t matter what you call yourself - (the question is), Do you want to change a life?”

The network, founded two decades ago in San Mateo, first brought churches together to discuss social concerns.

“Today it would be things like immigrant rights,” Wobber said. “We want to be where the rubber meets the road and change lives.”

The network, which has a board of 12 members, uses its 501(c)3 status to help connect organizations and people in need to sources of funding. It manages two scholarships funds, one in the Ravenswood School District, that pair mentoring with seed money for college. The scholarships are awarded to high school freshmen who might never think of going to college - the kind of economically and socially disadvantaged youth who, with extra guidance, could be opened to new horizons. Through regular pizza parties and ice cream socials, which include the students’ families, INCH gives students access to information and resources to make college an attainable goal. And, the group provides funding to make it happen.

“A mother working two jobs - how can she get knowledge of college to those kids?” Wobber asked.

He said he met one scholarship student last year who recounted being taken to visit Stanford University, where she saw a cadaver and held a human brain in her hand.

“She told me, ‘I’m going to be a neurologist.’ She was so excited, and she got on the Web to research what it’s all about,” Wobber said. He said the program’s goal is “to get that vision, in the four years that you’re in high school.”

The network also takes referrals from social workers, who screen clients who request one-time emergency funding grants or donated, refurbished cars.

Often, Wobber said, those who have received assistance want, in turn, to help others. He said one woman who received assistance from the young mothers’ program now offers free eye exams to anyone in INCH’s poverty program.

“There is such a lack of unselfish love (in the world),” he said. “They feel that - that someone cares when they’re down.”

In addition to offering scholarships and help with transportation and finances, the network hosts a gospel music festival, a holiday adopt-a-shelter program for church congregations, counseling in a juvenile detention center and a school-age mothers’ program.

“I hope God doesn’t call again soon with another thing to do,” Wobber said. “(But) all of this can be handled. I was a business person in the printing industry with 30 employees and six unions - this is a cinch.”

The organization, which has been all-volunteer up to this point, recently hired an assistant manager to oversee its programming.

For more information about INCH and its programming, call 941-1360 or write to INCH, 260 State St., Los Altos 94022.