It was the middle of the summer and Tim and his family were returning to their motel room after a day out. His mom inserted her key and nothing happened. They couldn't afford another night, so the manager had locked them out with their belongings still inside.  With nowhere to go Tim, his mom, and five siblings were left to roam the city until they settled in a public laundromat where they spent the night. 

With the temperature reaching 100 degrees, Tim and his family walked to the Families Together office looking for assistance. Fortunately, we had an apartment available and our team could act quickly to get them in our program. We moved Tim and his family into a safe, temporary home at Families Together that very day. Tim now has a warm bed to sleep in and a playground where he can run and have fun. He also participates in our After School program where he gets help with homework and enjoys fun activities like making smoothies. His mother has benefited as well. She is now consistently working with the goal of getting her family back to independence. 

Stories like this are the motivation behind the 2017 Let’s Face It Fall Campaign. You can give our community’s children a place to call home and an opportunity to thrive. Join us!

When you give today the Stewards Fund will match your donation making your impact even greater! Your $50 donation becomes $100; your $100 donation becomes $200 and so on. WHAT A DIFFERENCE YOU CAN MAKE IN THE LIFE OF A CHILD!

If you're looking for a rewarding ongoing volunteer opportunity where you can make a difference in a child’s day our After School Enrichment Program is for you!  Our Child Mentor Superheroes help children staying in our Short-Term Family Housing apartments (STFH) with homework and provide activities that encourage independence and self- expression.

This is a rewarding opportunity where you can watch a child grow and thrive!  

This opportunity is available every week on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 4:00-5:30pm.  More days may be added based on volunteer commitment.  Occupancy is unpredictable in our Short-Term Family Housing and volunteers must be flexible with varying age groups and levels of participation.  Volunteers must complete our orientation and have all required documentation on file including a background check before they can start volunteering.

Are you looking for an opportunity to serve that works around your busy schedule?  Maybe you're a teen looking to make an impact, but it can be hard to schedule in the face time.  If this describes your interests, we have an opportunity for you!

The face of homelessness in Wake County is increasingly the face of a child. Student homelessness has risen 56% since 2010 resulting in an estimated 5,000 children going homeless this year. Your mission (if you accept) will be to raise awareness about this important issue and inspire action by liking, sharing, and commenting on social media content on Families Together’s Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram platforms. To accept, complete the form below. We'd love to welcome you as a Social Media Ambassador for children in need of a home.
 

DRIVING TOWARDS INDEPENDeNCE

Families Together has two ongoing supply drives throughout the year.  Our Welcome Basket program and our Supportive Assistance Food Pantry.  

Welcome Baskets

Many people do not know that food stamp benefits cannot be used for essential items such as, shampoo, cleaning supplies, toiletries (including toilet paper) and laundry soap.  For families living at extremely low income levels, sometimes these items don't make it into the monthly budget.  Not having access to these supplies can lead to unclean homes, bodies and clothes which can contribute to poor health and increase the isolation that homelessness often brings.

In order to support families and celebrate their achievement in signing a new lease, we present all families a Welcome Basket when they move into their new place.  Each Welcome Basket is filled with everything the family will need to start off their road to independence clean and healthy!  

In order to meet this need, we depend on Volunteers like you to organize supply drives in your community.  It can be a box at your church or letters to your neighbors asking them to help, get creative and challenge yourself to fill the car with supplies for families in need!  To download a shopping guide, please click the button below.

Food Pantry

Even with monthly food assistance, we often see families that need help bridging the gap.  Often time there are delays in receiving benefits, or the assistance couldn't make it to the end of the month. Sometimes, a family just needs a place to start as they get settled into their new space. In order to support families in our program we maintain a small food pantry.  We keep very specific items so that we can insure that families will receive healthy and balanced staples from us.  

Volunteers in the community that help us to collect these items ensure that families and their children in our program will never go hungry.  Being able to lift that stressor from parents, helps them to focus on making life changes to help their family gain independence.  

If you are interested in collecting items for our food panty, please download the shopping list below.  

Items that we are constantly low on are, breakfast cereals/pancake mix, canned tomatoes, canned tuna/chicken, canned fruits, powdered milk, peanut butter and health snacks to go.

What a difference a year makes!  Last December the unthinkable happened to Nannette and her five-year-old daughter, Neriah when a mix-up with their housing voucher left them homeless. On Christmas Eve, they slept in bunk beds in a crowded shelter with 30 strangers. Nannette has cerebral palsy and walks with a cane but she worried most about her daughter. Neriah is shy. She missed her own room and felt bullied by the older kids. So Nannette did everything she could to keep her daughter safe and focused on school.

Things began to change for the better when Nannette was connected to Families Together and met Corey, her Mentor Advocate. Corey helped Nannette navigate a daunting system while the clock was ticking to use or lose her housing voucher. It took 200 calls to landlords and an extension from the housing authority to find someone who would accept the voucher. Nannette says,

“If it wasn’t for Families Together, we would still be in the shelter. Corey is a blessing. She put our best interests first and helped me give my daughter a home.”

Nannette and Neriah moved into their own place in October. Neriah is happy and excelling in school. They look forward to celebrating a simple Christmas at home. Nannette says, “Being appreciative is all I need.” She sends her humble gratitude to everyone at Families Together for making the gift of a home possible.

Donations to Families Together between now and the end of December are being matched. Learn more here.

PLMFT.ORG

We've revamped our website and are excited to share it with you! This is a completely new look for the site with beautiful pictures of some of the children and families we serve, as well as some pretty snazzy head shots of our staff team. The photographs, the content and the web design were done completely by our staff team in keeping with our commitment to put your donations where they are needed most - helping children and families affected by homelessness.

Our goal is to provide you with accessible information that's easy to read and easy to locate. We hope you'll find this makes for more enjoyable browsing experience.

The content will be changing with regular updates to our blog so please come back often. For now, you might want to check out Our Model, Our Impact and Success Stories.

Now is an exciting time. While the challenges we face are significant, we hope you share our optimism about the future and the potential to expand our impact and serve more families in need. Please feel free to reach out to us any time with questions, as well as feedback on our new website. We look forward to continuing our partnership. Together, we will continue to work for a community where all children and their families have a place to call home.

Your moral and financial support mean the world to families like Yasmine's. As an expression of her gratitude, Yasmine has shared here some of the challenges they faced and ways you and other supporters of Families Together helped them get to a better place.

All Yasmine and her husband wanted for her children was a safe and affordable place to live. But that simple dream proved elusive. Having already left an apartment complex plagued with crime, they were disheartened by the rapidly increasing level of gang activity at their new location.

Yasmine remembers, “We were harassed by our neighbors for speaking about the problems to the property manager. Garbage was left at our front door, and groups would stand behind my car so I couldn’t back out. We even had to take turns leaving work early to get the kids safely from the bus stop to our apartment.”

After her husband got into an altercation with gang members, Yasmine knew it was time to leave. “By promising not to say bad things about the complex, we were let out of our lease.” Without a place to live, the family moved into an extended stay motel. “It was cramped and it was expensive. We couldn’t save any money and it was hard to align our paydays with the weekly rent.”

Their past credit history made it hard to find another apartment, and two months later, the family was still stuck in the motel. “We tried to keep the kids’ routine as normal as possible. We’d take them to their old bus stop in the mornings and meet them in the afternoons so they could get to and from school.”

Yasmine called Social Services and was referred to Families Together. “Within a week, we had moved into a short-term apartment. That was an awesome day.” Working with their Mentor Advocate, Yasmine’s family was able to repair their credit and move into a house outside the city. The children had to change schools, but to Yasmine, it was worth it.“They miss their friends but are doing well, and attend a local after school club. We don’t have to hide inside anymore.

"Finally we feel safe."

While living in the Short-term Apartments at Families Together, Yasmine and her family enjoyed the programs and activities for both children and adults. She points to the education aspect of the program as being the most helpful. “What I learned about budgeting and working with landlords . . . that really could have helped me in the past.”

Yasmine describes the experience of homelessness as pressure-filled.

“It is stressful wondering how you’re going to get through the day, how you’re going to pay for the motel. As a parent, what you want for your children is for them to be warm, fed, safe, and have a place to sleep.”

Moving her family into a private three-bedroom apartment, even though it was temporary, was a welcome respite.

“It was good to be out of the tight space and to be living around others who were in the same situation. Everyone we worked with at Families Together was great and willing to help.”