FPCC items of interest
Hale Sanders
Family Promise of Cobb County Supporters,
I hope you have finished your shopping, or nearly, so you can relax a little and enjoy the season. As you know by now, we are opening our doors to serve homeless families on January 5 and St. James Episcopal will be the first hosting congregation. Covenant Presbyterian will host during Week Two, and both churches have already had their volunteer training. Here are some key items the board wants to share with you:
· Due to the Day Center at East Cobb Methodist not being quite ready (on account of fire marshal recommendations which we are in the process of implementing), we will be using the St. Catherine’s Youth House in January for our temporary Day Center. We hope to have all improvements done by mid-January but could conceivably take till the end of January. We will keep you posted with the developments to the Day Center, and we may need some help with painting around the middle of January. We will let you know when as soon as we know.
· We now have a six-seat passenger van that was donated to us and should suffice for this first month or so, until we grow and need the 15-seater. Our president Fred Massey is working with auto dealers in the area to obtain donations to cover the cost of the larger van, but we are open to any and all options, so let us know if you have any suggestions.
· Camilla Worrell, our director, purchased 16 rollaway beds with 4 inch foam mattresses from a company called Bemco that National FP recommended. We believe the beds are of a high quality and should last a considerable amount of time. We are in the process of seeking donations to cover the cost from organizations and groups.
· Camilla and Fred met with the Director of the McCleskey-East Cobb YMCA yesterday and the Y has agreed to partner with us to offer their facilities to our guest families! We are so fortunate to have this YMCA within walking distance of our day center, and now to have their facilities and services made available to our guests. This will surely go a long way to help them to maintain/restore their health during their stay with our program.
· We now have the support of Amazon purchases which can add to our donations. Through the Amazon Smile program, Amazon is offering ½ % of any purchases that you or your friends make, as long as you go to the Amazon Smile website at http://smile.amazon.com/ and indicate Family Promise of Cobb County as your charity of choice. It only takes 30 seconds of your time to do this, and our program will benefit. But, you will have to start any subsequent online shopping from this website, rather than regular Amazon website . Please consider doing this as FPCC will reap the benefits of such purchases.
· We received our first stock donation and had it sold quickly, as we are now set up for receiving such donations through our bank broker. For those of you that want to avoid a large capital gain, this is a good way to do that.
· John Zinger of Annunciation has provided a welcoming sign to our hosting families in the attached document. You will need to change the names of the guest families. Feel free to use or tailor it to welcome your families.
· Also please read the statement below from Sandy Hobson who is our new Congregational Relations Committee Chairperson…
WANT TO PLAY AN IMPORTANT ROLE IN THE SUCCESS OF FAMILY PROMISE ?
Join the Congregational Relations Committee.
Responsibilities:
Work with the infrastructure of the host churches
Keep the lines of communication open between host churches and our board of directors
Educate congregations about Family Promise
YOU CAN MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Give me a call and let's talk about how this might work for you.
Sandy Hobson- 404-790-1897
Speaking for all of on the board and our Director Camilla Worrell, we want to wish all of you very Happy Holidays during this season!
Hale Sanders
Secretary, FPCC