September 2008

Family Promise recently welcomed three new affiliates.

Family Promise of Lewis Clark Valley

Family Promise welcomes its 132nd Affiliate, Family Promise of Lewis-Clark Valley, serving two states, in the communities of Lewiston, ID and Clarkston, WA.

Volunteers gathered at their first training.

Without a family shelter, the community has great need for the IHN program. There were nearly 500 unfulfilled requests for shelter in 2007 and the twin cities’ school districts count about 150 homeless children on their rolls.  To serve that need, the Affiliate starts out with 10 host congregations and a day center located in a house in Lewiston owned by a Lutheran church.  Affiliate director Ron Ramos has extensive experience with congregational volunteer management.

The Affiliate’s first guests included one mother and father with their child, and a mother, grandmother, and three children.  The families were welcomed just in time for the start of school by First Christian Church in Clarkston, supported by First Presbyterian Church.

Straddling two states gives the Affiliate a unique challenge in addressing differing approaches to assisting homeless families, but it’s also a testament to how people of faith recognize that families, not borders, matter.

Family Promise of Beaufort County

Family Promise of Beaufort recently opened as our 131st Affiliate nationwide, and the fourth in South Carolina.

A rural community with more than 150,000 residents, Beaufort County previously had no shelters for families. The new Affiliate opens with 13 host congregations and a significant number of supports.  A centrally located day center in an office building in Bluffton allows easy access to the area’s islands and inland congregations.  Affiliate director Emily Bugay has a unique and ideal background for the job: she grew up as a member of a host congregation and later served at an internship at the Greenville Area IHN.

St. John’s Lutheran Church in Beaufort hosted the Affiliate’s first guest family, a mother and her two boys, ages 5 and 1.  School started the same week, and so not only does the family have a safe, secure temporary home in the network, it also had an entire congregation awaiting the 5-year-old’s first day of kindergarten, and sharing supplies and support.

Family Promise of Warren County

We are happy to announce the opening of our 130th Affiliate, Family Promise of Warren County, NJ, the 13th affiliate in the Garden State.  With no shelters except one for victims of domestic violence, and with the neighboring IHNs in Sussex and Hunterdon Counties often seeing half their guests originating from Warren County, the need for shelter and services in this largely rural community was stark.

The new Affiliate starts with nine host congregations and over a dozen support

The children's play room after completion of the day center renovations!

congregations, ranging from mainline to evangelical to non-denominational to Mennonite.  In the small town of Oxford with a view of the hills of western New Jersey, the day center is at Oxford Second Presbyterian Church at the manse, a large house that was refurbished in partnership with Habitat for Humanity. The Affiliate’s director is Bob Frankenfield, who has 30 years of experience in social services in Warren County, and has been involved since the beginning of the Affiliate’s development.

Updates

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