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The Emmaus Mission Center needs your help.
The organization operates on an annual budget of about $660,000,
and it has nine full-time and several part-time employees. It has
often scraped to meet expenses, and in recent years, it has fallen
farther and farther behind. It has occasionally found itself unable to
pay its bills, and it recently had to withhold employee paychecks in
order to meet expenses.
According to its website, the center is a non-profit,
multi-denominational social service agency established to provide
support for marginalized families and individuals within a 50-mile
radius of Cass County.
The organization in 1994 bought a former school complex
consisting of a church, rectory and educational building. The rectory
was converted into the state-licensed Morningstar Girls Home, and
the renovated former school houses an emergency housing shelter,
corporate office, crisis center and El Puente, the organization’s
Hispanic translation service.
The benevolence center includes as a food pantry and a distribution
center for clothing and household goods.
The homeless shelter opened at 805 Spencer St. in February 2002
with sleeping rooms for 48 individuals. Among the residents are
older individuals trying to survive on minimal income, single parents
unable to provide for their children, people who find themselves
homeless for various reasons and recent arrivals trying to make a
new start. Most are “working poor” and on the brink of financial
disaster.
The shelter not only provides residents with shelter, food and
clothing, it also puts them through a six-month program aimed at
helping them find employment and to get the education and training
they need to get their lives back on track.
The mission and its related organizations are a key part of the safety
net for Logansport and Cass County.
If you have the resources to offer help, please do so today.
That help can come in the form of a check, but it can also come in
the form of food or items for the benevolence center.
And it can come in the form of sweat.
The center has a great need for volunteers. If you can spare a few
minutes, or a few hours, those at Emmaus will be grateful for your
help.
