Interfaith Hospitality Network (also known as Family Promise) is an organization created in the 80s in response to the prevalence of homeless families. In most homeless shelters, families are divided along gender lines. For example, if a single mother has a 14-year old son, the mother will go to the women's shelter and the boy will go to the men's shelter.
As an alternative, IHN houses homeless families in churches for a week at a time. Here's how it works: IHN provides a trailer full of folding twin-size beds to a church, which sets them up in classrooms for individual families. The church provides dinner, activities in the evening, an overnight supervisor, and breakfast in the morning. An IHN van picks up the families in the morning and takes the kids to school or day care, and the parents to a 'Day Center', where social workers assist them in finding employment and housing. In the evening, the van takes the families back to the church. Each church does these tasks for one week at a time in rotation. Here at the Orlando branch, we are currently in a 2-month rotation cycle.
Our church is too small to find enough volunteers for this effort, but we have united with an adjoining Episcopalian church and a nearby Church of God (Anderson) congregation to pull together the necessary resources. I am the primary coordinator for this effort, which has been a great chance for me to grow and develop both spiritually and practically.
Back when I was at Ortega UMC, we contemplated participating in IHN. There was never enough support because the task of providing for these families in the system appeared too vast and complicated.
But what I've learned is that operating an IHN-participating congregation is very simple. You provide dinner in your fellowship hall kitchen and have someone there in the evenings to supervise (something akin to substitute teaching) and someone to sleep overnight. That's it.
IHN seems scarily complex for congregations to take on, but it isn't at all. So if your church is thinking about joining IHN, do it! IHN isn't nearly as difficult as it looks.
Just do it!
Thursday, March 23, 2006
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3 comments:
The Interfaith Hospitality Network is one of my favorite ministries that my church participates in. Anyone can participate, from staying overnight to cooking a meal for the family to driving them to and from work if they don't have transportation. We have had several different families stay the week at my church, each with their own unique needs. The families have been extremely thankful. I would encourage everyone to volunteer.
This sounds like the family sized version of "Room in the Inn". Our church participates in that and it is relatively simple. Our church also supports a very specific family shelter in two separate buildings that manage to keep families together. I really love both programs for what they help accomplish. You are correct about them being very simple.
It's a wonderful organization that so easily helps people.
The most important part of IHN is getting kids out of dangerous, dirty shelters and into safe, loving churches and synagogues.
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