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Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless is a coalition that is located in the Eastern Panhandle of western Virginia. It is a non-profit as well as an all-volunteer organization that is composed of service organizations, churches and involves individuals who are concerned about the individuals who are experiencing the homeless in the Stern Panhandle. The faith organization is available to deliver services to the homeless as well as those who are on the verge of being homeless 24 hours in a day especially when there are no other viable alternatives. The coalition is dedicated to serving the community by providing emergency shelters for the homeless especially where other options are not available.

The mission statement of the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless is to serve the homeless individuals in the eastern panhandle through a variety of ways that include providing emergency shelters to the homeless individuals when there are no other viable options that are available for the homeless (Padgett, Henwood & Tsemberis, 2016). Apart from providing the emergency shelters, the faith-based organization helps in providing other essential services to the homeless that include helping in connecting the homeless people to the housing and other community services. The faith community also seeks collaborative solutions as well as the improvements of services that are provided by the homeless people as well as the housing opportunities.

The Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless serves various purposes in their bid to helping the homeless and through their partners and volunteers, they assist the homeless people in different ways. One of the ways includes providing short-term, safe, warm, and dry shelters to homeless people when no other option does exist. The homeless live in the streets, and we all know how dangerous it is outside, suffering from hunger and cold, and thus the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless makes it possible for the homeless to live a comfortable life once again. The other way that the organization tends to help the homeless is by ensuring that they are provided with and have nourishing food, transportation services, medical care as well as the basic requirements such as blankets, sleeping bags and warm clothes.

The Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless also helps in connecting the individuals experiencing the homeless to housing and community services and also connecting them to with their psychological, physical and as well with their spiritual well-being so that they are able to move healthily towards self-sufficiency (Means & Rankin, 2018). Every person is entitled to a healthy life, and as well spending their most valuable time with the people who value them and therefore it is of great significance that the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless takes the burden of connecting the homeless both to their loved ones and spiritual guidance in an attempt to show them love and that they are part and parcel of the community which they live. It through this that the homeless can be able to know that there are people who do care for them even when they feel like their lives have come to an end.

The faith organization also helps in seeking collaborative solutions as well as improvements to the housing opportunities and services that are provided to the homeless in an attempt to make their lives better. The Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless partners and volunteers do believe in the value of every individual, and so they are willing to go and reach out to the homeless and the disenfranchised wherever they may be located. The mission and the purpose of the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless can only be possible if the efforts of various stakeholders and proper strategizing. Calling for gatherings is one of the ways through which the organization can be able to push its agendas by giving inspiring messages to attract more volunteers in an effort to make collaborations. The organization also encourages people within the Eastern Panhandle to notify the relevant departments for potential adoptive parents, and mentors who will be ready to provide their services to the homeless whenever they are needed.

The number of homeless people is on the rise in the United States. According to the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Annual Assessment Report indicated that there were more than 554,000 homeless individuals in the United States by the year 2017 that was observed on a single night. The number of homeless in the US, therefore, accounted for 0.17 percent of the total population (Kiwanuka et al. 2019). The Eastern Panhandle is one of the regions in America that has the largest number of homeless people, and this makes it a challenge for the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless. Managing the homeless in Virginia alone is difficult in that the number is high. By January 2018, the region had around 5,975 people were experiencing homelessness in a single night and out of that 660 were family households, 286 were young people not accompanied by adults, and 485 were veterans while 897 people were experiencing chronic homelessness.

The Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless is faced by major problems some of which makes it hard for the organization to keep on providing its services to the homeless. One of the major challenges facing the organization is lack of funding. Financial assistance is one of the major pillars that make organizations successful not only for the profit based but also for the non-profit based organization. The Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless (FCCH) relies on donations from well-wishers and volunteers to provide financial assistance (Lowe, 2002). It should be noted that not many people or organization are able to assist and in some cases, if they are able other might not be willing to assist by providing their hard earned money to help people. Most of the people believe in capitalism, and thus they are not concerned with the lives and affairs of other people. To capitalists, donating hard earned money to the organizations is like encouraging more people to become homeless as they are assured of a soft life without struggling. With such beliefs, faith-based organizations find it difficult to source funds from willing donors. The government does not have a strategy of funding the faith-based organizations and thus the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless as well is not an exemption and thus does not benefit from government funding. Less funds mean that the organization cannot be able to provide all the services needed by the homeless and therefore only a small number of people are helped by the organization.

Another challenge that faces the faith-based organization is the fact that the number of homeless people is increasing at an alarming rate and this can be attributed to poverty. In most of the regions, many people are living below the poverty line, and this means that the number of people who might be on the verge of losing their homes to finance basic needs such as food and education for their children is on the rise. Basic necessities in the current century do not only include food and clothing but also includes education. Every person needs to be educated but the problem arising is the hiking school fees that has been a major trend to the US schools, parents are forced to pay for the fees out of their salaries leaving them with little money to spend on family issues.

The minimum wage in America has been slightly increased over a long period of time, and this means that the increment has not been in pace with the increased cost of living. Many people, therefore, have no or less money to take care of their families especially the elderly who purely depend on their children for survival. With the increasing number of low-income families, the old people are left with no one to care for them, and this means that they end up in the streets seeking for assistance from strangers, and this increases the number of the homeless individuals making it hard for the organization to provide services owing to their financial constraints.

Homeless people are treated as if they are outcasts to the society as they have no or limited access to the basic needs such as bathing water, food, clothing and shelter and thus most of them live in tattered clothing, scramble for food in the pits, sleep in the floor and this means that they get dirty, ugly and filthy (Havlik et al. 2016). Not many people would like to be associated with this group, and therefore, they have no one to approach and tell them their stories, and due to this they often feel alienated and doesn’t feel like part of the general community. Due to this dejection, they get depressed due to stigmatization living alone in the dark and suffering without anyone’s notice. With little or no connection to the people, the homeless are left with fewer survival chances, and there is no link between the willing organizations to help them as the organizations depend on the well-wishers to notify them of potential homeless people in the society. Therefore, the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless does not fully accomplish its objective of helping the homeless making it a great challenge.

Connecting homeless people to their loved ones is one of the biggest challenge faced by the FCCH organization (Dovey, 1985). Most of the homeless people are mentally ill, and this means that they may not even possess the identification documents. Most of the homeless people may have escaped from their homes without notifying their loved ones and on the process may have left the identification documents behind. Others may have possessed the documents, but in the process of survival, they either may have got damaged due to poor storage. Besides, the mentally ill individuals may not have the right memory, and thus they may not be aware of what exactly was their home or their relatives and friends. Therefore connecting the homeless to their families have been and have continued to be a challenge to the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless.

The community has been one of the greatest pillars for the Faith Community Coalition for the Homeless as it has portrayed the willingness to collaborate with the organization to make the lives of the homeless much better. Despite the desire to collaborate with the coalition, most of the members of the community as well have limited access to resources to which they may help in aiding the organization. Not all members of the community are collaborative as some of them are full of pride making it challenging to provide assistance although they comprise a minimal number. The main push back that can be drawn from the Eastern Panhandle society is lack of cooperation in helping to connect the homeless to their families and friends either because they are not aware of their families or they simply don’t want to do more. Despite this, they have remained to be an integral part of the helping the homeless campaign.

References

Dovey, K. (1985). Home and homelessness. In Home environments (pp. 33-64). Springer, Boston, MA.

Havlik, S. A., Schultheis, K., Schneider, K., & Neason, E. (2016). Local liaisons: Roles, challenges, and training in serving children and youth experiencing homelessness. Urban Education, 0042085916668954.

Kiwanuka, H., Maan, Z., Rochlin, D., Curtin, C., Karanas, Y., & Sheckter, C. C. (2019). Homelessness and inpatient burn outcomes in the United States. Journal of Burn Care & Research.

Lowe, E. T. (2002, December). A Status Report on Hunger and Homelessness in America’s Cities, 2002: A 25-City Survey. The United States Conference of Mayors, 1620 Eye Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006. For full text: http://www. usmayors. org/uscm/news/press_releases/documents/hunger_121802. asp..

Means, K., & Rankin, S. (2018). Faith Is the First Step: Faith-Based Solutions to Homelessness.

Padgett, D., Henwood, B. F., & Tsemberis, S. J. (2016). Housing First: Ending homelessness, transforming systems, and changing lives. Oxford University Press, USA.