Can we end poverty and poverty causing homelessness for an entire community?

WOW!

Can we end poverty and homelessness for an entire community??

As you may know, Cherry Street Mission Ministries has been ending poverty and poverty causing homelessness for individuals for 60 years. I think we've proven again and again, with staggering accuracy, that it's more than possible to end the chronic cycles of destruction in a person's life.

But that's not the question for today is it? Can we bring an end to the nightmare reality that thousands of our fellow citizens and their children are in fact without a home in Toledo and the surrounding region?

If you can only see the obvious, the answer is NO!!

HOWEVER - if you're willing to work, serve and intention yourself beyond the obvious and are willing to spend and be spent without a consideration for time, then the answer is an overwhelming YES!!

Poverty, incarceration, homelessness and addiction (just to name a few) are downstream issues, created way upstream of today's reality. When we end homelessness for a single individual, we do that in the downstream reality - they come to one of our facilities, we serve them and minister the life of Christ to them and they become restored and return to our communities.

But in order to solve the downstream realities for an entire community, we need an upstream solution. We are only experiencing the plight of poverty and homelessness as a community because there is a "factory", if you will, that's creating it.

We must also come to terms that the ultimate upstream reality begins with the parent. It's often been said that it takes a village to raise a child, meaning that it takes all of us to ensure the child's success. After several years of thinking this way as a community, I think we can say with relative certainty that not only is this line of thinking not working, it's failing miserably.

Don't you think the more accurate statement is, it takes a village to raise and support a parent and it takes a parent to raise a child? I do - the parent is the beginning of the stream and they need our overwhelming support.

At Cherry Street we always say; "Time is not a factor when the inevitable is being pursued". I guess, the biggest question we must answer is; Are we willing to take time off the table so that a better day for Toledo may emerge?

What do you think?

Dan Rogers