Creatively Connecting to End Family Homelessness
May 6, 2020
How are Christians living out the call to love our neighbors during this time of isolation and struggle? With Bridge of Hope, church-based Neighboring Volunteers provide tangible and emotional supports, leveraging their social connections to help families facing homelessness move toward long-term stability, and helping nonprofit case managers provide more holistic services. Here’s what creatively connecting with families facing homelessness during physical distancing looks like:
- Neighboring Volunteers in Centre County, PA, are coordinating meal deliveries for their Bridge of Hope family. Everyone is staying healthy but still feeling really connected and purposeful, staff have a lot of help providing for the family’s needs, and – they’re supporting their local restaurants. Everyone wins!
- At Midland’s Open Door (MI), Neighboring Volunteers put together a “birthday in a box” for the parent of the family they walk with, complete with decorations, a cake, and a few gifts.
- One Lancaster, PA Neighboring Volunteer self-quarantines during the week in order to babysit the children of a single mom who has to work on weekends.
Thanks to technology, community connections and the invaluable support of church-based Neighboring Volunteers, Bridge of Hope locations, as essential services, continue to enroll new families to help them find housing and long-term stability, even in the midst of the current situation.
Bridge of Hope helps bring together nonprofits and churches to transcend family homelessness through Neighboring.
Blessings and peace,
Anne Dunnenberger
Director of Outreach