A Note From Paul Shackford, President of the Board of Trustees

What a wonderful and glorious Annual Family Promise Gala on October 19th when we celebrated our 30th anniversary of supporting homeless families.  Thirty years of Promises Kept . . . and now we have Promises for Tomorrow.  

We celebrated the past.  Nancy Woods was our honoree and, as one of our founders, she was a key leader who got us started and helped us grow to be a pre-eminent organization in Bergen County—and the only organization that serves working families who have become homeless.  Her vision enabled us to keep the promises that we made to help those families.

She also laid the groundwork for our Promises for Tomorrow.  We have evolved so that we not only provide shelter but also address the systemic issue that keeps those families homeless—poverty.  And so, our Promises for Tomorrow include providing education and job training, childcare, transportation and other types of support so that our families can move toward self-sufficiency.  Our Promises for Tomorrow are ones that we will keep.

Read the articles in this issue of The Promise.  You’ll learn of the personal empowerment and financial literacy workshops we are conducting to help educate parents.  We are not only providing those workshops, but we are also helping the children in our program close the 30-million-word literacy gap between them and their more affluent friends.

With our case managers providing one-on-one support, we know our families and we know how to help them.  Our holistic approach is the way they can move from homelessness to self-sufficiency.  

Your support changes lives. And that is one of the reasons we were so happy with the turnout for the Gala.
There are many ways to help Family Promise.  If you have any questions, feel free to contact me.  With your support, we will continue to change lives . . . from being working families who have become homeless to become, simply, working families – like you and me.

Paul R. Shackford
President
Board of Trustees