City of Refuge Interview (With Seth Lingenfelter, the housing program director)
Q: Can you talk to me about the individuals you serve and how they come to your organization? A: Specifically to housing, we serve single mothers with children and single ladies, but we do serve men in all of our other programs. They homeless people usually come to us by calling in. The people will then come in for a thorough intake so they can see what City of Refuge is, we can evaluate them, and they can see what it is going to be like living here. Q: What has been the biggest challenge/thing you are most in need of? A: It is always money. Being a non-profit is difficult. We don't make money on what we do. We rely heavily on individual donors, that is not necessarily just someone who writes a check for a million dollars. We have some folks who consistently support us with money since City of Refuge started, and that speaks volume. We also have a lot of great volunteers who started off volunteering and now are consistent leads in projects and help all the time. For example, our financial management class is completely run by volunteers. Q: How do you help people become independent? A: I will speak specifically towards housing. First, we address the need those who come into the shelter, which is not having a home, so we give them a place to stay. After that, they go through our assessment process. Basically, we are just getting to know them. The assessment lets us get to know all about that person, where they are from, what their passions are, what their desires are. After that assessment we identify specific goals that they will be working towards. Whether that is employment, education, child care, or something else. Once they go through our assessment housing we can move them into our six- month housing program, where they can really address those goals. So that's kind of how we work towards helping people become independent. Q: How can kids help with homelessness? A: Kids can help a lot by just what you are doing, just being aware of the problem and trying to support it as much as you can. You can help build gardens, benches, or anything to help our residences have a sense of normality. We do not have any opportunities for kids to volunteer with the homeless people because there are a lot of things that go into it. Kids can also help collect blankets, sheets, and pillows to donate because that is also very helpful. Q: What Is one of your favorite success stories? A: Well, we have our youth after school programs, they do stuff pretty much everyday of the week. We had one youth come to us about three years ago.He was out in the neighborhood playing basketball. Someone reached out to him and invited him to come out and play in our Friday Night Lights basketball game, it is an alternative to other things that kids in this neighborhood could be doing on a Friday night. He came and started playing basketball consistently there. He got involved with the summer camp, started attending church, his mother started attending church. The kid just got accepted into the college Reinhardt and is going to be attending their next semester, he got a scholarship through our ambassador program. All of that started from an invitation and a pickup basketball game.