“We want to make the invisible visible,” said Robin Diaz, executive director of The Source, at a cocktail reception last Monday evening at Northern Trust Bank. The event provided an opportunity to thank donors and give potential contributors an overview of the nonprofit organization’s accomplishments and plans for the future.
The Source, a Christian outreach ministry, has been providing assistance to homeless individuals, low-income seniors and families since 1995. Among their numerous services, clients are offered meals, clothing, counseling, support groups, hygiene items, showers and laundry, mail and telephone services, benefit referrals and transportation. And while the facility does not operate as a homeless shelter, it does open its doors to provide a warm place to get in out of the cold overnight when temperatures drop below 35 degrees. All of their services are vitally essential for those people with nowhere else to go who are living out of their cars or in tents in the woods.
Job readiness programs continue to develop, such as a Farm to Kitchen program that teaches clients to grow and harvest vegetables and herbs on land leased from Florida Veggies and More. Workers commit to four-hour days, five days a week, learning skills and earning a stipend at the end of a six-week program. A second, more intense six-week period is also offered. The finished products are sold Saturday mornings at the Farmer’s Market on Ocean Drive, and are regularly featured at the tables of local restaurants and clubs.
Having a commercial kitchen at their facility has enabled clients to earn a certificate based on the State of Florida ServSafe Kitchen standards, making them eligible to work at any kitchen in Florida.
“The programs help them understand what it takes to get and keep a job,” said Diaz.
“What really resonated with me is that it is a totally local nonprofit that serves the community. Those of us that are so blessed to live here have to help those that are less fortunate,” said Jan Lauffer, who has served on the board for several years.
“It’s also important to me that this is a faith-based organization,” she added. “The Source’s mission is not to enable these people but to empower them. That means teaching them a skill, helping them to gather themselves with the tools they need to get experience – getting a birth certificate or social security card, being properly bathed and dressed. So many of them don’t even begin to know what the process is to be able to find a job.”
Diaz spoke about actor Richard Gere, whose eyes were opened to the plight of the homeless after his experience posing as a destitute man on the streets of New York for the movie, “Time Out of Mind.” She quoted him as saying, “I could tell when people from two blocks away had made a judgment about me on the corner.”
“No one plans to be homeless,” said Diaz, noting that a family or medical emergency or the loss of a job can quickly wipe out a lifetime of savings and force people to the street. “We need to stop walking by homeless individuals as if they were invisible.”