Firm Hope In a better tomorrow!

Americans are struggling with stagnant wages, rising debts and increased expenses during these tough economic times. What happens when a corporate executive loses a job or a family simply can’t make ends meet to put food on the table? What about the refugee who needs to learn English to get a job or the homeless man who wants to get off the streets before winter sets in?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ extensive welfare program is a system unlike any other because it provides temporary relief while at the same time helping people help themselves. The fine-tuned program has been in operation for decades and is run almost entirely by volunteer labor. Although it was primarily established for members of the Church, the program also assists others who are struggling.

Based on the principle of self-reliance, the Church welfare system includes canneries, farms and factories throughout the United States that provide food and commodities for those in need.

In addition, thousands find jobs annually through its employment centers and on-the-job training at Deseret Industries stores. Thousands more add to their own home food storage to prepare for a rainy day.

Charlene Cummings from Leonardtown, Maryland, learned firsthand how the Church welfare system can change lives. Charlene dealt with abuse as a child and struggles with a diagnosed mental illness, but she recently moved from a supervised living group to her own apartment. Charlene credits much of her newly discovered ability to function independently to the watchful care she receives from her friends at church.

In Charlene’s situation, local members of the Church taught her financial management skills, including budgeting and savings. Because she’s diabetic, members assisted Charlene with menu planning, shopping and other areas involved in managing her illness. When times were really challenging in her life, the Church provided both financial and food assistance to help Charlene bridge the gaps in her personal income. “The Church has become the family I’ve never had; they’ve taught me things I’d never learned,” Charlene explained.

Mormons are counseled, as a part of Church practice, to develop such independence and self-reliance.

“We teach self-reliance as a principle of life, that we ought to provide for ourselves and take care of our own needs,” suggested late Church leader Gordon B. Hinckley. “And so we encourage our people to have something, to plan ahead, keep a little food on hand, to establish a savings account, if possible, against a rainy day. Catastrophes come to people sometimes when least expected: unemployment, sickness, and things of this kind. The individual, as we teach, ought to do for himself all that he can do for himself.”

Another aspect of these teachings is the need to stock basic foodstuffs in case of any type of emergency. The Church operates over a hundred regionally located storehouses and home storage centers to help members gather their food storage. Other plants process specific food items, such as the peanut butter plant in Houston, Texas.

In addition, many Mormons grow and can some of their own food supplies. Paula Henderson of Raleigh, North Carolina, cultivates an urban garden of about 625 square feet in her yard. From the harvest of fruits and vegetables her garden produces, Paula makes pesto and pickles, cans or dries tomatoes and roasts peppers. “Last fall, after the freeze,” Henderson explained, “I gathered all the green tomatoes, put them in the garage and used them as they ripened all winter. I didn’t buy any tomatoes until March.”

Paula’s experience illustrates one of the practical concepts of the welfare plan: utilize all available resources many ways, adopting a lifestyle of economy or provident living.

The concepts of provident living and caring for the less fortunate have been primary objectives of the Church from the very beginning. Based on the Christian principles taught in the scriptures, Church founder Joseph Smith reached out to immigrants, widows and orphans, providing them with sustenance in their stretched circumstances. Brigham Young, another early Church leader, established a Perpetual Emigration Fund to assist newly converted Mormons in their travels to the Utah territory. The fund, repaid to the Church when the recipients were financially able, circulated to help other traveling families.

Such hand-to-hand concern for others continued during the settling of the frontier lands, but gained additional attention during the Great Depression years of the 1930s. Strained financial situations, unemployment and overall discouragement led Church leaders to implement a more formal application of the self-reliance concepts.

In 1936, then-Church President Heber J. Grant announced “that the gospel plan not only takes care of our spiritual needs, but our temporal needs as well. Our primary purpose is to set up a system … under which the curse of idleness will be done away with, the evils of the dole abolished, and independence, thrift and self-respect be once more established amongst our people. The aim of the Church is to help people help themselves.” A system of work projects and storehouses was then set up that bridged the unemployment gaps of the time and provided for the immediate needs of Church families.

Such a system endures today, a two-way system where one helps another in need and they both benefit. “If you build self-reliance in people,” noted Dennis Lifferth, managing director of the Church’s welfare program, “everybody grows; it is the essence of the welfare plan. Lives can be changed by personal interest and attention.”

SOURCE: LDS.org

North Porch Women and Infant Centers might best be described as a special kind of emergency room. The waiting area is full of comfortable couches and chairs, and in the storage room the shelves are stocked with baby supplies.

The “patients,” mothers who have got to the end of the week or month and have no money for diapers or baby food for their infants and toddlers, get immediate help. Since 1984, North Porch has provided the emergency assistance to thousands.

It seems fitting that an emergency center for mothers and children was founded by women. Ten years ago, a group of Episcopal women began looking around for ways to help the poor here.

When they decided to establish a drop-in center, the Episcopal Diocese provided space in the form of several storage rooms on the lower floor of Cathedral House, its administrative headquarters. The founders, some of them with their husbands in tow, spent hours making the room habitable.

After the cleaning and painting were finished, they brought used furniture from their own homes and toys for a children’s play area. From the beginning, North Porch’s board aimed for a “homey” atmosphere. The upholstered furniture is worn but comfortable, and the floor is carpeted.

“We didn’t want this place to have a gypsy look,” said Marie Obermann, who is the current board president and one of North Porch’s founders. Only by Referral

Because of limits on financing and supplies, the original board decided that the center’s emergency packages would be distributed on a referral basis only. To spread the word about the new venture, the founders held an open house for the social service workers who would be making those referrals.

Clients began arriving almost immediately. Florence Bustamante, past president of North Porch’s board, said that instead of the teen-age mothers the volunteers had expected, most were in their 20’s. Many brought their infants and older children to the center.

North Porch has had a paid manager since the beginning. For the last seven years, Oleeta Randleman has held the job. Ms. Randleman has a special empathy for her clients. “I sat in that chair once,” she said, pointing to the client’s chair beside her desk.

While the majority of the clients are mothers, grandmothers also visit North Porch, often to get supplies for the grandchildren they are raising alone. Ms. Randleman noted that occasionally even a father will come through the doors. She remembered one father who arrived on a bicycle. “I’ll take anything I can carry on my bike,” Ms. Randleman said he told her.

Sometimes caseworkers from the Division of Youth and Family Services visit the center to take away supplies for newborns who have been left abandoned in Newark hospitals. The North Porch newborn package, which sometimes includes a complete layette, accompanies the infant to a foster home where he or she will spend the first few months of life.

“As far as I know, we are unique,” Mrs. Obermann said.

When the center was first opened, the demand for food and diapers was so great that North Porch almost became a victim of its own success. At the end of each month, and especially in summer, supplies will be completely exhausted. Rather than turning people away, the board instituted a monthly quota system for referrals.

Now, North Porch operates at maximum capacity, serving 50 full-service clients a month, each of whom receives a package containing diapers, baby food and formula. An additional 10 to 15 people receive only diapers. A Limit on Help

The center is open Tuesday through Thursday afternoons, and the flow of visitors varies. Sometimes, Ms. Randleman and the volunteer on duty have the space to themselves. On other days, the main waiting area teems with mothers and children who arrive early, fearing that supplies will be gone before the end of the afternoon.

In keeping with the center’s role as an emergency provider, clients are limited to one package a child per year.

The packages do not come cheap. Though most of the baby clothes and layette items are donated, baby food, formula and diapers must be purchased. The center saves money by buying formula in bulk.

Baby food is purchased at stores in Paterson, where North Porch has established a successful satellite operation in cooperation with the food bank at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church. St. Paul’s buyers get better prices from stores, Mrs. Bustamante said, and the Newark center reaps the benefits.

If money is in short supply at the center, so are volunteers. Over the years, the original corps of volunteers has been diminished, and new ones have not replaced them.

Part of the problem, Mrs. Obermann said, is that many suburbanites do not like to drive into Newark. Volunteers willing to make the trip find that parking is difficult and costly. To rectify the situation, the center’s board is offering to pay for parking for its volunteer workers. Determined to Survive

Though the center suffers from problems common to all nonprofit social service organizations, North Porch’s board is determined to make it survive and flourish. There is some chance that Cathedral House will eventually be sold, Mrs. Obermann said, putting North Porch in the same homeless condition as some of its clients. Whatever happens, the volunteers are committed to staying in Newark, preferably in the same neighborhood.

The women who direct North Porch are also hoping to establish more satellite branches. The three-year-old Paterson branch provides packages for approximately 70 clients a month, and because of its affiliation with St. Paul’s Church it does not have the parent organization’s restriction of one package a child per year.

Mrs. Obermann said the board would like to set up a North Porch outpost in Jersey City and possibly another in Dover. “Of course,” she added, “what we would like most of all is not to be needed.”

It is clear that North Porch will be needed for the foreseeable future, and to stabilize the center’s finances, the board is preparing to begin a drive to establish an endowment. This effort was aided by the recent receipt of a small bequest.

Though the center’s anniversary was in February, its board and volunteers have yet to celebrate. The singularity of North Porch is apparent in the fact that the accomplishment of getting through 10 years is less important to those involved than the accomplishment of helping mothers get through the last 10 days of each month.

More information on North Porch

SOURCE: New York Times