welcome to the personal touch and peters township my name is tony snow cal ski and i'm the host for this program the personal touch in peter's township is all about the good things that are happening in our community because great people who are involved and trying to help others the personal touch will focus on those in peter's township who have the time the talent the energy and the means to help those who are less fortunate that we are in many different ways today show's going to highlight one special way in which a variety of peters township people are volunteering to help those who suddenly find themselves without a home to call their own just some interesting to statistics and background to share with you at a february twenty fifth teen briefing of the house homelessness caucus in washington d c congressional leaders were informed that two and a half million children that's one in every thirty children in the united states were homeless at some point during the tony twelve thousand and thirteen school year other statistics tell us that an increase in homeless children were identified in thirty one out of the fifty states and that overall in the united states homeless students have increased over eight percent over the previous year in our area alone washington and allegheny county up to twelve hundred children in a given year have been identified as homeless where do these children and their families go how can they possibly find a place to live food to eat and transportation for their jobs how are these children educated well family promise of southwestern pennsylvania is one organization that helps families to answer these very questions and today i would like to welcome  director of family promise of southwestern pennsylvania sandy merton's a peters township president who was resident who is on the family promise board of directors and blaze hall it who is the chairperson of the church recruiting committee for family promise both sandy and blaze are long standing volunteers as well in the family promise program here in peters township at st benedict's church laura we're going to start the conversation about family promise with you could you start out by telling us a little bit about what family promise is and how it got started in our area well first of all tony when people say the word here the word homeless there's a picture that comes to mind and it's not who is really needing the help the most over forty five percent of the homeless population in our country are families with children and family homelessness is an at an all time high  their housing because they've lost a job for a marriage or a parenting relationship is broken up families are fleeing and healthy relationship or families that are doing what they're supposed to do they're paying the rent every month and they're getting stuck with a landlord that is not caring for the property and we hear the stories of all crawling up the walls and ceilings coming down on people's heads family promises a network of church congregations that are opening their hearts and the doors of their churches to host families that have found themselves in the situation so this is a nonprofit this is a nonprofit organization but we are truly a network of volunteers how it all works together is that the families during the day we have a physical day center buildings one is located in craft and one is washington that becomes the address of residence for the families and their base of operations during the day they are working on the job of housing you know and the professional staff is there putting to a plan together with each family and helping them work that plan we must be doing something right because nationally seventy percent of all family promise families go back sest fully into housing and you had a high success rate here in southwestern pennsylvania even now and also we have last year we serve thirty families out of our program eighty percent of them went back into their own it's a good day and that's a wonderful the church piece and sandy in place can tell you more about that is that our network of churches each agreed to host on a rotating basis for one week at a time so churches are hosting a four to five times a year and what that means is for that week our four guest families we work with up to four families are literally living in their building and that's during dinner evening and overnight when they're not at the day center what family does does is it takes existing space that is sitting vacant for most of the week a sunday school room may only be used on sunday morning and making an offering homes for families when they need the church volunteers are providing a home cooked meal each night there's always somebody on site in the building with the guest families not because they need a babysitter but because they need to go to person and then during the day volunteers are utilizing our van or transporting the families back to the day center and the physical church building goes back to doing what it does every day so now both of you remembers it saying benedix here in peter's township band how did you get started in the volunteering of family promise at your church well i had been a volunteer with them i promise i've been probably about seventeen years now but in two thousand and we were just spending and it challenged us of what we could do how we could put our faith together so at that time my wife knew somebody who was participating family promise at one of the local churches and we are our group offer to be support for that church one day a week whenever it was their turn we did that for two years and found that it was a very worthwhile commitment a very worthwhile project for us to be able to utilize our manpower to help out and at that time our church had completed a building project we now had increased facilities and i approached the pastor father done a tele and who opened to open his arms to the the ministry and said go ahead and bring it in and so that's when we contacted the executive director only church in peter's township so those who go to st benedict's most of them repeaters township prisons but you know i'm sure you have volunteers from other areas surrounding think benedix but what are some of the other churches in peter's township that are involved involved in this program but trinity united methodist is the host congregation and actually they are supported and that's our internal terminology they're sending volunteers other churches are sending the mentors to help their efforts and then i believe it right united methodist church is a support rights united methodist church is a support church they are supporting thomas presbyterian and thomas part the tarion is one of our original charges they've been hosting guests with us for twenty years and i know peter's creek i think presbyterian was one of the original ones yes it was as well so lots of involvement from people here in peter's township in that in this organization and once these families come into the churches we'll find out a little later how people within the church interact with them but what kind of qualifications do you need to be a volunteer in family promise a willingness to s can sleep for you well get really a bottom line a willingness to serve the heart for helping helping families that have just found themselves in a situation so actually if we have people in peter township who are watching this show and who are interested in becoming involved in family promise but they don't go to church in peter's township are there other churches in the area that are also involved absolutely we have sixteen partner churches right now and they are they range from the city of washington in bentley ville all the way up through canons bergen park in mount lebanon some through the south hills carnegie  organizations who may want to be interested in joining family promise how do you go about getting a church to come to family promise and and want to help out and provide the space and or the volunteers to feed congregation actually opens their doors to them how these houseless families the others lors mentioned has been supporting where we have a congregation the perhaps doesn't have the facilities maybe they don't have the manpower to to do the whole thing but what they will do like we did when we started they will partner with a host church and be able to take one of the responsibilities maybe the whole day of responsibilities we're talking about all that's involved  think it's important to talk about the the responsibilities then what is needed we have people to drive the van these are people that drive the van that belongs to family promise they drive from the the day center to the church and then in the morning they drive to the families back from the church to the day center we have families that provide a warm meal we have other families that provide hospitality that is they bring in dessert and they they we hang out with the families play with the children give to give the adults a chance to relax for a little bit and then we have overnight hosts that two people that come in and the sensually are the go to people overnight we actually the program provides inflatable mattresses for the families and for the the overnight hosts to sleep on so it's almost like a camp out in the in the  church and being able to make sure that everybody goes to bed just fine everybody wakes up in time to then catch circuits and took today and especially important for the children when they need to go catch a bus because if there's a high schooler that finds themselves in such a house the situation you know they've got to get up early to go and catch the bus so we have families that they're leaving at five forty five in the morning to head to the they center to catch the bus early now that's a great picture of what the day is like and we want churches to help out and sandy i know you're on the board of directors here with family promise and you have a different working relationship with laura's executive director and you're also involved in this church recruiting committee from your perspective how do you sell a church on one ng to be of become a part of family promise what touches your heart as a person who's been involved in this well what touches my heart are the children and i think whenever i talk to a church i always tell them about the children when you think about getting a six month old out of bad after five thirty in the morning or  three or four year old who's that their bedroom changes every week their bed doesn't change but their bedroom changes every week or the teenager who suddenly finds himself because their home burnt down and they have a big family and he finds himself the day before the night before thanksgiving houseless and in a church who comes to you and says don't you have any place to sleep tonight either or are you one of the good people from the church and the teenagers the teenagers get to me also because that is a really truly critical critical age and if we can just help one of them that that's what i do and you've done it for a long time and i think sandy and blaze are great examples of people here peters township who from the bottom of their heart and through their faith they reach out to try to help others and that they want to make sure these kids who are in these situations where they are house s temporarily find housing and are able to continue their education which they can because by law the school districts are required to ensure the chewable children who are homeless have to continue their education so the children who are involved in the family promise program either in washington or in craft and go to local schools they have the option of of enrolling in their local school and the local school districts have been wonderful except the kids in immediately we wave some of the requirements around having to have all of the background work and but they also have the option to return to their district of origin and that district needs to provide the transportation if it makes sense obviously if it's a district that's going to take two hours to get to at rush hour traffic that doesn't make sense but we seem to see any quote balance of who stays in their own schools and who then transfers to the local district so we take care of the whole child we take care of the whole child the whole family we keep everybody safe we keep everybody fed we keep everybody happy with great volunteers bike like sandy in place and what families say repeatedly when they successfully is they just never thought it would be like this in a good way while on that note we're going to take a short break and go to a commercial and when we come back we'll be talking with two that's why it's important to wash hands surfaces and fresh  or welcome back to our second segment of the personal touch and peter's township once again i'm your host tony so cal ski and i have the great pleasure of having to fellow coordinators from family promise here with me in this segment and that would be mary spend a belly from st benedict's church air and painters township and also sharon ward from trinity united methodist church also in peters township in this segment we're going to share with you experiences as coordinators and working as volunteers with those people who find themselves temporarily homeless in our area and how we work with family promised to ease the stresses in their lives to start out here with a little bit just to find out how the two of you became involved with family promise your church well i became involved in two thousand and two we had a little meeting at the parish and  everyone to come and listen to what family promise was and he asked if somebody would be the cord nater and as always leaving the meeting i said if nobody else raises their hand i will and of course nobody did so i have been doing it sense and it's been a really or warding experience to thirteen years you've been doing this wow a long time to be involved in an organization like the great organization and sharing how about you how did you get involved trinity i got involved as a dinner preparer i was just in church and the coordinator at the time was amy for near and she was soliciting volunteers and saying you know we need people to prepare dinner and you know you're already you're preparing dinner for your own family just make a little more and come in and share that with our homeless families and i don't even know how long ago it was that i started but i started making dinners so every every time they would cycle through trinity i would make dinner for him and i i loved it i would bring my kids up with me and we would sit and have dinner with the families and you know it's a helping hand to families that just don't have that safety net and you know you can provide just a meal and a safe place for them to come but the program that so both of you now have a role as a coordinator at your church what does a volunteer coordinator do with what kind of things do you handle at s an overnight to host each night so it's quite a few volunteers that we need so i just make sure that the schedules out in our parish we also have to be protecting god's children they have to be certified so we have to go through that process also so that we make sure that everybody on the list is volunteer or has been through that program so that's basically my role and then i go down i greet the families make sure that everything set up bedroom also have to coordinate with the preschool that we share the facility with when the preschools in we have to take everything out every morning and put it in a separate room so it's just it's just like kind of coordinating everything  behind our church and scouts graciously let us use it for the week they move out and they usually use our hall in the church and so we have the challenge of coming in and cleaning out the scout fourth family we have to create a private we put in a privacy wall and create a fourth space so we don't have a big space but it is very cozy and very family ask so that is nice i think of what i have to do is add up all the hours and see who all was involved and it's amazing the number of people that it takes to host these families who write them into our churches stay there we feed them we transport them we buy supplies at the house the day center that they stay for give an estimate about i know probably varies from time to time that you have the families because we host them about four or five times a year but about how many volunteers or people do you think from your church community or actually involved in this at trinity we are truly lucky because we have support churches that that help us through the week that our redeem takes monday st david's takes wednesday and center presbyterian takes friday so they have coordinators for their church that fill those days for us so that trinity being a small church that really relieves a lot of the volunteer pressure but i would say you know for dinner hosts we probably have twenty five families that that are on our list of volunteers for van drivers it's about ten overnights it's about five or six so you know with each position we have different a different number of people that help we're always trying to recruit more because you know you can never have enough there's like our next week is in july and that people aren't need help so you know give a broad base and mary besides the volunteers do you see use it all get involved in family promise you know we do have some young families the common they bring their children and so then they really want their children to see how blessed they are and maybe to to in the future they will be able to do some volunteer work and they they bring their kids and let them play with the other kids and it works out really well i'm wish we had more young families that did that but you know so the scouts have built us from some cabinets and some closet space and sometimes the work and a place to live and a good a good place for their family to be and i think that that when you see that the end result you're happy to that you were able to help them  can agree i mean it's it's it's a safety net that a lot of these families don't have most of them are renters their families are renters so when they had a situation where they they don't have a place to go  you know we provide a safety net and again you see so many families come through so many wonderful stories and you know you just keeps you wanting to to continue and serve the families it's one of the few township such a wonderful place to live and you know it's a good feeling inside for us to know that we can reach out and help those who are struggling and dealing with stresses of their lives at this moment and it does take a lot of people to get this effort moving and i want to thank you both for sharing your perspective so much about family promise with our audience and it's incredible to know that there are so many people  up to help out you in our prior guest sandy merton's and blaze hall it demonstrates that the personal touch does exist in peter's township many of us are blessed to have the talent in the time in the means to provide a helping hand to others in difficult situations and at this time i'd like to also think ryan vaughn i helped the service stir robin hodge and frick and all the students here at the peters township high school media classes for helping us put together this first edition of the show people and a network of churches in washington and allegheny county are helping those who are temporarily homeless if you or your church would like to become involved in the family promise of southwestern pennsylvania network please contact l to the executive director for one two one two one two nine one six and thank you for viewing the show and remember the you too can reach out and help someone it's all about the personal touch but you just have to have like a glimmer of hope family promise of southwestern pennsylvania connects children and families experiencing homelessness with a network of local congregations and dedicated staff all focused on providing them with shelter meal and support until they are able to return to sustainable independent lives in their own homes it makes you feel good to help others it teaches you a lot about why women especially are homeless because all of that homeless because of drugs or because of miss appropriating their money and things like that is god's house and why was a bill to bring in the  in the homelessness is everything affecting tons of people from all ages and to have a local impact to touch locally is so much more  meaningful if your family or a family you know is facing homelessness please contact family promise of southwest if they had the space and the resources i would encourage you i really would because it's just you get to meet different people in different walks of life this is an all around great program i think i mean they've helped us tremendously i mean to go from our situation to having an apartment tomorrow in less than five weeks for me that insurmountable