As you may have heard, there are some exciting and necessary changes being proposed to our sheltering schedule as well as additional services Family Promise hope to soon offer.
On November 25, 2019 several members of our board, staff, church partners and volunteers met to discuss the need to target our sheltering program on the highest need months during the year. As a result, the Board of FP proposed operating the shelter for two, three-month periods in 2020 (mid- May through mid- August and mid- November through mid-February).
A lot of thought was put into revising our hosting model. For example, in recent months, other area shelters have greatly expanded their capacity to accommodate families with children. In addition, our available resources (congregations, volunteers, and funding) to operate a year-round shelter, have been strained. As a result, the Board and Staff of FP decided to target our resources to best serve the Little Rock area by hosting families during times when extreme weather conditions create increased hardships, and to also be available to help children continue to receive wholesome and nutritious meals during times when schools are not in session and they often go hungry.
For the full-term, we will be working to build our volunteer services, increase our congregational and community engagements, and will also bring more stability programs in the forms of eviction prevention, rapid housing, shelter diversion, education, awareness, coordinated referrals and access to safety-net programming. We will focus on involving our wonderful and dedicated volunteers in ways to engage and bless many in a plethora of ways!
We want to ensure that our network has a consensus on our proposed modification; therefore we invite you to contact Executive Director Cynthia Ramey if you have questions, have suggestions, or would like to engage in helping to build us back to a 12-month rotation.