The mission of the Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Gainesville is to mobilize community resources and local congregations to provide for homeless families through compassionate care shelter, meals, and comprehensive case management.
Interfaith Hospitality Network (IHN) is a nonprofit organization that provides shelter, meals, and comprehensive case management for homeless families with children in Alachua County, Florida. The IHN goal is not simply to provide short-term food and shelter for families, but to determine those factors that caused the family homelessness and to help the families move to or return to self-sufficiency, via assistance in procuring various services, including employment, education/ vocational training, benefits, medical care, and--ultimately--independent housing.
IHN is a volunteer-driven organization that unites communities of faith in a collaborative effort to assist homeless families. While in IHN care, families are sheltered in participating houses of worship, with each “host” congregation providing shelter for one to two weeks at a time up to five times per year. During their host weeks, congregation members serve as staff for the program and provide meals, personal care items, transportation, and shelter for the guest families. In the morning, children go to school or day care, and adults go to work or apply for employment and necessary services.
The IHN Program Coordinator provides case management services for all families, working with the adults in each family to develop a case plan, which includes linking the families with financial services, employment possibilities, education and job skills training, health care, day care and/or educational services for the children. IHN staff help each adult obtain employment and find housing. Families continue to receive the services of the IHN Case Manager after “graduation” from shelter, to ensure that the problems that resulted in their becoming homeless do not recur.
IHN was incorporated in 1996 by members of local religious congregations who came together to look at various models for providing shelter for homeless families with children. The organization opened its doors in 1998 and has provided 30,597 nights of shelter and 91,851 meals.
In 2006, the Gloria Dei Foundation made a $15,000 grant to IHN to support the salary of the Case Manager. We had changed the job description and qualifications for our Case Manager, desiring to hire someone exceedingly skilled to help our families get back on their feet. This required increasing the salary by $13,000, a large budget increase for us. The Gloria Dei Foundation graciously granted IHN $15,000 for operating expenses in Fall, 2006, which helped us pay for this position increase. We were granted an increase in funding by the Alachua County Commission for 2007-2008, which are dedicated to reimbursing the Case Manager salary for FY 2007. Because we now have an exceedingly skilled case manager with adequate experience, we have been able to not only better serve the families in shelter but also serve another group of families in a transitional housing program.