Family Promise of WNY
In Focus
16 Glendhu Place, Buffalo, NY 14210 PHONE: 821-9100 www.fpwny.org
The Family Promise of WNY Public Relations Committee is celebrating our Host & Support
Congregations by publishing this newsletter to let everyone know what’s happening in our
Network. Please contact Sandy Seitz – Sandy.rachelsmomnews@yahoo.com. Thank you.
FEBRUARY 2014 Issue
FAMILY PROMISE
NETWORK NEWS
NEWS FROM THE DAY CENTER
Who’s Who @ Family Promise of WNY
(2014):
Family Promise of Las Vegas recently
received keys to a 15-passenger newly
refurbished van at the National Auto Body
Council’s (NABC) annual Recycled Rides
giveaway.
***
Members of the nation-wide NABC repair and
donate recycled vehicles to families and service
organizations in need.
Recycled Rides
recruits collision repairers, insurers, paint
suppliers, parts vendors and others, to
contribute in their own, yet synergistic ways.
Check out the National Auto Body Repair
Council’s web page: www.autobodycouncil.org
Sandy Seitz, President
Lee Evans – Vice President
Jason Lang - Treasurer
John Klatt – Secretary
Casimer “Casey” Czamara, Executive Director
Denise Morse, Case Manager
Alex Deitz, Administrative Assistant
Martin Lewis, van driver
Board of Trustees:
Jim Bennett, Marilyn
Sozanski, Doug Fitzgerald, Jessica Miller, Mary Lou
Dietrich, Laura Genco, Mark Robson
FPWNY Host Congregations:
S.S. Columba-Brigid RCC (Buffalo) – Infant of Prague
Catholic Church (Cheektowaga) – St. Christopher RCC
(Tonawanda) – Akron First UMC (Akron) – St. Matthias
Episcopal (East Aurora) – Clarence Church of Christ
(Clarence) – Grace Evangelical Lutheran (So. Buffalo) –
Unitarian Universalist of Buffalo – Crossroads Lutheran
(Amherst) – Orchard Park Presbyterian – Grace
Community Wesleyan (Blasdell) – Hamburg UMC – St.
Stephens-Bethlehem UCC (Cheektowaga) – Salem UCC
(Tonawanda)
===============================
Family Promise of Greater Helena (MT)
will hold its 4th Annual “Comfort Food
Challenge” fundraiser at the Lewis & Clark
Fairgrounds on Feb. 24th. The $12 ticket (or $10
advanced ticket) gets you all-you-can-eat
samples of comfort food and a drink. There will
be dozens of food from local churches and
restaurants.
===============================
Family Promise of Spokane (WA) is
sponsoring the 50/50/50 Campaign on-line.
Here’s how it works: For 50 days, 50 people are
asked to pledge $50 in one of three ways:
(1) 50 people to donate $50 a year for 3 years
[equals to a $150 pledge]
(2) 50 people to donate $50 per month for 3
years [equals to $600/year]
(3) 50 people to donate $50 per week for 3
years[equals to $216.67/month or $2,600/year]
The New Family Promise of
WNY Resource Center
We are officially in our new location at 149
French Road in Cheektowaga. Same phone
number 821-9100.
“Kind words can be short and easy to
speak, but their echoes are truly
endless.” (Mother Teresa)
===============================
1
On Feb. 3, 2013, Family Promise of Anoka
County (MN) held an INDOOR fundraiser,
“Out of the Box.” Participants set up their
cardboard box houses on a “street” illustrating
the journey from homelessness to hopefulness.
Guests enjoyed wine, appetizers, and jazz music
as they wandered up and down the “street” to
cast their vote for their favorite house. They also
participated in a silent auction of 40 offerings.
The winning entry was actually a houseboat
crafted by members of a Lutheran Church called
“S.S. Hope.”
LETTER FROM THE FPWNY BOARD
PRESIDENT: (FROM ANNUAL MEETING
1/16/14)
When you step back and look at Family
Promise of WNY, it doesn’t make sense. It
seems like such an impossible idea.
A network of church congregations – all
denominations, a wide variety of religious beliefs
and doctrines.
A nonprofit – which means we survive
primarily on grants, donations and fundraisers.
And practically everyone involved are
volunteers (except for the office staff, who aren’t
in it for the money).
Volunteers – every
imaginable personality type.
Hundreds of
people from all sorts of social and economic
groups.
Then you ask all these people and all these
churches to open their doors and welcome in
strangers for a week at a time. Homeless
families. Families in crisis.
It seems impossible.
Sometimes, many
times, I find myself just shaking my head in
amazement at how all of these pieces can even
come together at all.
But they do. Why? Because in spite of all
the differences, every one of you share the
same compassion, love, generosity and
kindness toward your neighbors in need.
You go beyond offering a place to sleep for
the night. You go beyond preparing a hot meal.
We have gone through so many changes in
the past three years. Three Executive Directors,
three Case Managers. Host churches leaving
the program and new host sites joining. We
outgrew the Day Center on Glendhu and are
now in our new Resource Center on French
Road. 18-20 families are served each year. In
three year’s time, you have touched the lives of
over 50 families. Fifty.
This is why I don’t panic when things don’t go
as planned. When you look at this program, the
different
denominations,
the
different
personalities, the sheer number of volunteers
involved…the uncertainty of funding… It works.
Everything has a way of working out. Because
in spite of the differences, our mission is the
same: “…assistance for homeless families while
they seek stability and independence.”
I am proud to be a part of this program. I am
in awe of what goes on week after week, month
after month. The kindness. The generosity.
The compassion.
And for this, I thank you.
Sandy Seitz
===============================
Poverty: Time to Eradicate It
Fifty years ago, President Lyndon B. Johnson
was quoted as saying: “Very often a lack of
jobs and money is not the cause of poverty,
but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper
in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair
chance to develop their own capabilities, in a
lack of education and training, in a lack of
medical care and housing, in a lack of decent
communities in which to live and bring up
their children.” Fifty years ago, President
Johnson recognized that poverty was the
biggest drain on our country and our society and
one of the biggest concerns at the time. Today,
poverty still persists and we need to start making
the tough choices necessary to eradicate it.
Politics 365 – From your point of view
Rep. Scott: Recommitting Ourselves
to Ending Poverty in America
Jan. 29, 2014
===============================
“The ultimate measure of a man is not
where he stands in moments of comfort
and convenience, but where he stands at
times of challenge and controversy.”
(Martin Luther King, Jr.)
===============================
This was on the “HOMELESS IN SEATTLE”
Facebook page:
“For those who are unemployed and living out of
their vehicles there is the ever stress of getting
impounded and losing everything. Vehicles are
required to move every 72 hours, a city law that
is hardly ever enforced unless somebody
complains – which for the homeless, happens all
the time. With little income, it becomes difficult
to pay for car maintenance and gas for the
constant shuffle to a new parking spot. To help
someone out with fuel expenses, a good
Samaritan by the name of Brooke Greiner
dropped off $50 worth of gas cards. Thank you!”
2
On January 22, 2014 “A King’s Ransom”
thrift shop & furniture consignment shop
located at 3748 South Park Avenue in
Blasdell, held a fundraiser for Family
Promise of WNY.
Most private sector employers offer no sick
days, and many will fire a person who misses a
day of work, even to stay at home with a sick
child. A non-functioning car can also mean lost
pay and sudden expenses. A broken headlight
invites a ticket, plus a fine greater than the cost
of a new headlight, and possibly court costs. If a
creditor decides to get nasty, a court summons
may be issued, often leading to an arrest
warrant. No amount of training in financial
literacy can prepare a person for such exigencies
– or make up for an income that is impossibly
low to start with.
Our political culture still tends to view lowwage mothers as contributors to the “cycle of
poverty.”
By: Barbara Ehrenreich
The Atlantic
===============================
Soup Kitchen Director Receives
Congressional Nod
From left to right: Sandy Seitz, Casey
Czamara and Cecilia Sztaba
Organic Soup Kitchen Executive Director
Anthony Carroccio was awarded with a
Certificate
of
Special
Congressional
Recognition by Congresswoman Lois Capps
(CA) for serving veterans, seniors, families and
the homeless with more than 1,500 meals per
week. Last year Carroccio served 600 meals per
month at the Veterans Memorial Building, and
this year he plans to expand and offer a mealdelivery service for housebound vets.
===============================
FACES OF POVERTY:
Gary is homeless
and lives in a tent. “I have a little propane
heater, when I can afford the propane. But
someone slashed the back of my tent with a
knife and opened a can of Campbell’s Chunky
and threw the soup all over the tent. I don’t feel
it was another homeless person because they
probably would have kept the soup and ate it.”
Gary admitted that he was camped in an area
where he wasn’t supposed to be, “but I don’t like
going way out in the woods, because people are
more dangerous than animals out there.”
Santa Barbara Independent
Jan. 20, 2014
By: Organic Soup Kitchen
===============================
Two Area Agencies Receive
Grants to Help
Homeless
“The goal is to
HOMELESSNESS IN THE
NEWS
Integrated Services
end homelessof Appalachia Ohio
ness, but I
received
$395,000
don’t see that
through the Homeless
happening any
Crisis
Response
Program. This Crisis
time soon.”
Response Program is
new and replaces the emergency shelter and
tenant-based supportive housing components of
previous years. The goal of the program is to
prevent homelessness and, when it does happen,
to provide emergency shelter or get the person
or family back into permanent housing.
Statewide, the Ohio Development Services
Agency gave more than $26.3 million in grants
to 80 organizations to support homeless
It’s Expensive Being Poor
It is actually more expensive to be poor than
not poor. If you can’t afford the first month’s
rent and a security deposit you need in order to
rent an apartment, you may get stuck in an
overpriced residential motel. If you don’t have a
kitchen or a refrigerator and microwave, you will
find yourself falling back on convenience food,
which – in addition to its nutritional deficits – is
also alarmingly overpriced. If you need a loan,
as most poor people eventually do, you will end
up paying an interest rate many times more than
what an affluent borrower would be charged. To
be poor – especially with children to support and
care for – is a perpetual high-wire act.
3
prevention, emergency shelters, transitional
and supportive housing projects.
Homeless prevention measures can include
paying a family’s back rent or covering rent for a
certain period of time until the family has been
stabilized.
“We’re helping people problem solve,” said
Terri Gillespie, regional coordinator of
Integrated Services. “The goal is to end
homelessness, but I don’t see that happening
any time soon.”
“GRANDFAMILIES” is a term used to
describe adults over 60 who become caretakers
of a grand child. Becoming a caretaker of
grandchildren creates or exacerbates a number
of health and financial
hardships for the
grandparent. These grandparents are more
likely to live in poverty and have a higher risk of
poor mental and physical health.
The library
system in Chesterfield County (VA) won an
$80,000 grant for a two-year financial literacy
program geared toward these “grandfamilies.”
WOUB News
Jan. 6, 2014
By: Arian Smedley
===============================
HEADLINES: “Buffalo’s Poverty Rate
Tops 30 Percent, Making it America’s
Third Poorest City” In an article written by
==============================
Grant will help homeless
Zephyrhills (FL) city officials started the new
year on a positive note after learning that their
city was awarded a $76,598 state grant to help
prevent homelessness.
The City Manager Jim
More than
Drumm
had
been
criticized for not applying
half of the
for the 2013 Emergency
grant money
Grant in the spring.
will go for
However, he partnered
“rapid rewith
Chancey
Road
housing”
Christian Church and the
Samaritan Project to
apply
for
leftover
program funds in October. More than half of
the grant money will go for “rapid re-housing” or
getting homeless people, or those who are about
to become homeless, established in homes again
– with families with children a priority.
The grant money will also assist families who
are at risk of becoming homeless by paying
rents, deposits, utility bills and relocation
expenses.
G. Scott Thomas, Projects Editor-BUSINESS
FIRST, January 2, 2014, it is reported that:
New figures from the U.S. Census Bureau
indicate that 30.1 percent of the City of Buffalo’s
residents are living below the federal poverty
level. The only cities with higher poverty rates
are Cleveland and Detroit.
Tampa Tribune
Jan. 5, 2014
By: Gary Hatrick
===============================
POVERTY IN OUR SCHOOL
SYSTEM “High rates of poverty among
SPECIAL NOTICE
students mean you’re dealing with a student
population that has greater needs educationally
and is more difficult to educate as a whole.”
(Billy Easton, Executive Director of the Alliance
for Quality Education, an advocacy group in
Utica, NY). “Children living in poverty are less
likely to have exposure to enrichment activities
as young children and educational opportunities
in and outside their homes, so they need more
resources to level the playing field.”
Rachel’s Mom Newsletter is sponsoring a
fundraiser to benefit Family Promise of WNY.
“Hustle for Health – Spring into Action!” is
planned for sometime in May 2014. “Hustle for
Health” is an aerobic line-dance program that is
new to the Buffalo area. If you would be
interested in becoming part of the planning, or
would like more information please call Sandy
Seitz @ 771-8563
===============================
4