Church Family,
Ben and I spoke at church 2 Sundays ago about a new program that is getting started called Family Promise of Forsyth County. A coworker of mine is involved in it and told me about it. Ben & I went to their September meeting at Christ the King Lutheran Church. Attached is a handout that they gave us at the meeting, that goes into more detail about the program (if you'd like to see the handout, email Jan @ ben_a@bellsouth.net and I'll send you a copy). It also lists the other counties/towns in GA that have these programs. Hall, Fulton, Dekalb, Gwinnett and White counties are the ones near us.
If you missed our explanation during church 2 weeks ago, it is a program that recruits 13 churches to help house up to (4) homeless families at a time, with each church housing them for one week at a time, and only doing one week per quarter. The churches house them only at nights, in either a large room or gym with tents or dividers or in separate classrooms (at the church), using cots and/or air mattresses. The same (4) families stay at one church one week, then go on to the next church for a week, and so on. In the mornings, the Family Promise 15 passenger van comes and picks up the families, takes the kids to school and the parents to work, and the others (younger siblings and parents without jobs) to the Day Center, which will be at Freedom Tabernacle. At the Day Center, there will be counselors to help them find jobs and also financial counselors to help them manage their money. There will be church volunteers there also to take parents to job interviews and babysit kids while parents are on the job interviews. In the evenings, the van will take the (4) families back to the church to spend the night. The average time families are in the program is about 2-3 months. It gives them a safe, secure, warm place to stay and food to eat while saving up money for a security deposit and one month's rent so they can rent a house and get out of the program and on their own again.
Our church, of course, can't help with housing the families but we can definitely help with supporting other churches that do and supporting the Day Center by helping provide meals for supper, transportation to job interviews, babysitting the kids and just coming and playing with them and giving the parents a little break, and helping out monetarily for the financial costs that it takes Family Promise to put this program on.
Christ the King Lutheran Church is holding a yard sale on Oct. 10-11 and all of the proceeds will go to Family Promise of Forsyth County. They are asking for our donations of gently used items to be dropped off either Wed 5-6pm or Thurs 9-11am. They didn't say what time the yard sale starts on Fri Oct 10, but I imagine they will start early. So you could bring it by Fri or Sat if you can't make it before then. And PLEASE, PLEASE come by and buy some items and support the cause!!
As of their September meeting, 2 churches had signed up to host families: Freedom Tabernacle and the Good Shepherd Catholic Church. There were about 7 other churches that have shown interest and hopefully will sign up. They will not start the program until they have 13 churches sign up to host families, so as not to burden each church more than one week per quarter. Believe it or not, there are 258 homeless children that the schools know about right now, in K-12, in this county.
For those that would like to know more about the program, they have a group page on Facebook. Please join it and share it so your friends can find out about it. And the next meeting is Oct. 23 7pm at Freedom Tabernacle Church on Freedom Pkwy. Spread the word!
Thank you!
Lorie
