New Life Skills Training Program Starts
The lives of homeless families are chaotic and uncertain. Without a permanent place to live and a steady source of income, people rely upon basic life skills such as financial literacy, time management, communication, positive parenting, and healthy living habits to help pull themselves out of poverty and into stable lives. These skills are valuable for everyone, but when life is interrupted by homelessness, the basic life skills that lead to a person’s to success can be missing. This is where the Family Shelter’s new Life Skills Training Program comes into play. Our program is designed to address the need for critical life skills training for parents staying at Family Shelter with the goals of helping parents achieve stability for themselves and their family by finding employment and securing housing.
The program provides a friendly learning environment for our parents by supplying them with all the training materials needed to complete the lessons and to apply what they learn to their daily life. During the training sessions, childcare is provided through a combination of volunteers and student interns to ensure that parents are able to completely focus on their lessons. Parents who are unemployed are required to attend two sessions per week which last for an hour each.
Empowering parents with the skills to provide better lives for themselves and for their children is part of Family Shelter’s mission and is how we strive to serve the community every day. Our board members, staff, and volunteers believe that this new program has become an essential part of the transition from emergency shelter housing to a more stable environment for our families.
Emergency Funding Campaign a Huge Success
Earlier this year, Family Shelter was faced with the possibility of reducing services, or even suspending operations, due to a severe funding shortfall. Since we are the only organization in the area providing emergency shelter specifically for families with children, the effects of this possibility would have been devastating for so many parents and children in the community. In the midst of a down economy, Family Shelter launched an emergency funding campaign with the ambitious goal to raise $100,000 by the end of the year. With the generous support of individuals, congregations, businesses, and organizations we were able to exceed our goal! This success means that we are able to keep the shelter open and continue to help homeless families and children now and in the future.
To mark the success of the funding campaign, the Ray Tanner Foundation held a celebration at Carolina Stadium that included many of our special donors. Coach Tanner presented Family Shelter with a generous check on behalf of his foundation and even signed autographs. Family Shelter would like to thank everyone who made it a possible to continue serving homeless children and their families in the Columbia area. Without your support, we would not be here!
Family Shelter Gets Three New Roofs
The campus of Family Shelter consists of two dormitory buildings, a dining hall, and an administrative office with a playground in the middle of the buildings. The shelter’s small staff works hard to keep the facility up to code and in working order, but the real credit goes to the volunteers who generously give their time. Each year, over 500 volunteers donate thousands of hours to rake leaves, paint walls, do repairs, serve meals, and do activities with the children.
This year, Rogers Townsend and Trenholm Road United Methodist heard that Family Shelter needed help paying for various roofs that needed replacement. With shingles falling off and water leaking in, Comprehensive Maintenance Services (CMS) and Custom Roofing of SC were called in to put new roofs on both dormitories and the dining hall. With so many maintenance expenses at Family Shelter, we are so grateful for this project that brought attorneys, churches, and contractors together to make sure that the families and children at the shelter stay safe and dry. Thank you!
