April 15, 2011
Sincerely,
We’ve had an exciting yet another busy week with the project Tyler’s House. First we would like to apologize for the delay with this week’s blog update. We were very busy meeting with people, working on a new website and organizing our many files. Early this week we visited many organizations in the community to learn more about the services and resources available to the homeless and individuals living in poverty in the Findlay & Hancock County area. We toured the Family Center Agencies and became familiar with their facility while meeting some directors from the organizations at the Family Center. If you are unfamiliar with the Family Center Agencies of Hancock County you may visit their website at www.hancockfamilycenter.org. We spent the rest of the week preparing for a meeting Thursday put together by the director of Hope House, Sammie Rhoades, at the Family Center.
One point we would like to make before we keep moving forward is that we are not yet an established organization; we are still in the developmental stage of what is called a ‘project’. Tyler’s House at this point is still a ‘project’ which is clearly stated in our website, video, and all blog updates. We are though filing to become an organization very soon, we do have a plan (explained in brief detail below) established as far as what we will be doing in the community to help the homeless and we will be incorporating the services already offered in the community into our soon to be established organization. We are in the stage of our project where we are getting the word out into the community as to what we are doing, seeking community support and involvement with the project, working with other organizations so we can set up the services we will be offering the homeless, and are looking for individuals who share the same vision of ethics and passion for helping the homeless to establish a board of directors for Tyler’s House.
At Thursday’s meeting we met with Sammie Rhoades & Jennifer Swartzlander from Hope House. In attendance was Craig Alan Brown from the Ohio Small Business Development Center, Carolyn Rodenhauser from Job Solutions, Gene Kelsey from the Hancock Christian Clearing House, and Gwen Stembridge from the University of Findlay HFH Office who is also a member of Findlay’s Homeless Coalition. The meeting was mostly put together for us to gather more information about the organizations and services already offered to the homeless living in Hancock County. Sammie Rhoades provided us with a lot of useful information such as statistics and the history of the organization Hope House. She also provided a lot of feedback and insight as to how we’ve presented to project to the community and how we could better approach the community. Together we all gained a better understanding of what has already been done as a community for the homeless and what is being done now. The meeting was very informative and has helped guide us as to how to move forward with the project and what we will be able to provide as an organization once we become established. Our Founder, Rob, was invited to the next Findlay Homeless Coalition meeting being held in May and he will be presenting the plan of Tyler’s House when he attends.
Thursday evening Rob attended a Hunger Simulation event at the University of Findlay with Gwen Stembridge from the university’s HFH Office and Habitat International. The event was part of the University of Findlay’s ‘Act! Speak! Build!’ week in which they focused on hunger awareness in our own community. At the Hunger Simulation Event each participant was given a card that provided a story of someone dealing with poverty issues and an amount of money that person had to spend on food. Each participant went through a taco bar and was only able to ‘purchase’ food with an amount of money that person living in poverty had budged for food that was listed on the card. It was an interesting simulation and many participants found that many individuals and families living in poverty have a difficult time purchasing food with their own income. Gwen later gave a presentation on poverty levels and what programs are available for people dealing with hunger issues, such as the Ohio Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program that provides food assistance to individuals and families living in poverty in the state of Ohio. Rob then gave a speech about his own experience dealing with poverty and homelessness and focused the attention on the stereotypes of people living in poverty or dealing with homeless and how the stereotype makes the issues of poverty and homelessness very misunderstood. He also presented the project Tyler’s House to the students who participated in the event and met students interested in becoming involved in the project.
As of right now we are currently in the process of developing a new website for Tyler’s House. Keep in mind our current website is only a project development website letting the community know what we’re doing and that we’re seeking support and community involvement with the project. Our new website will be the website our organization will use once we are established and is being worked on diligently. The website will be interactively broken down into three categories; it will contain a section for clients, a section for partnership, and a section for sponsorship. Part of what we will be doing as an organization once we are established is offering a complete online interactive portal for homeless individuals that bring together every resource there is to offer the homeless in Hancock County. The online portal will be a free service available to any Hancock County homeless individual or organization to use and will bring together all of the organizations and services already offered in the community into one central location online. This website and portal will not be launched until approved by each organization we incorporate into the portal or until we are officially established as an organization. The website is a work in progress and will be first presented to the homeless coalition in May. Once we become an established organization and have our website launched that provides the online service for the homeless and explains what our organization does to potential sponsors and donors we will be able to begin seeking community & corporate sponsorship, holding fundraisers, and accepting donations to raise funds to purchase a property to offer emergency shelter for the homeless. This is the general plan so far in brief detail. Anyone who would like to know more in detail about or plan, does not know what an online portal is, or would like to know more about this service we are creating for the homeless can contact Rob at the phone number below.
We have a lot of work ahead of us. Our plan for the rest of the month before we meet with the homeless coalition is to finish developing our website and online portal. We will also be very busy gathering more information on services available at the same time preparing files to establish the organization, Tyler’s House. Feel free to contact us if you want to know more about the progress we’ve made with the project or to learn more about our goals and how we plan on helping the homeless. Also, if anyone is interested in working with us on this project or if you are interested in becoming a board member of our soon to be established organization, please contact Rob at 419-957-8869 or send an email to tylershousefindlay@gmail.com.
Sincerely,
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