Fenton Center of Hope

Community Food Pantry: Our organization operates a large free choice community food pantry to assist local low income residents living in crisis situations. Our commitment to offering a free choice food pantry gives residents in need the ability to actually shop for items they need or prefer. The food pantry is set up like a small grocery store with all food categories represented including fresh produce, dairy items, meat items and toiletries. The demand and service area for this program have been dramatically higher this year due to the uncertainty in the economy, Covid-19 impact and employment uncertainty. The Fenton Center of Hope has been selected to be part of a Community Care Task force which has expanded our service area and number of families being served by our organization. We assist with emergency food requests from local residents and agencies 7 days a week. During 2022 we brought in and distributed nearly 10,000 pounds of food, toiletries and paper goods every month through the food pantry. The food pantry operates with a dedicated volunteer team of about 30 people per week.

Community Baby Closet- Our organization operates a large community baby closet that provides all of the items needed to assist mothers and families that have had a recent baby or existing children up to age 5. We are able to assist local low income families in need through this program which allows stability and hope for them to continue moving forward without the burden of additional expenses related to young children. The baby closet features a mentoring program for parents in which they can receive education on a broad range of topics on a monthly basis. Mothers are assigned to a mentor and we assign educational modules based on personal improvement areas we uncover or topics of interest based on the developmental stage of children at the time.

Love Our City Community Outreach- Our organization coordinates a variety of community outreach events that focus on assisting local low income residents in a variety of ways. Our goal with Love Our City is to bring together various community partners that have a common commitment to providing programs of excellence along with much needed resources that residents are in need of. We intentionally focus on building a high level of trust and relationship with those that we serve. The trust and relationship allows our team of 100+ volunteers the ability to address underlying root causes of needs we uncover through our initial intake process. These needs are adressed through programs we offer onsite such as mentoring, counseling, life skills training, job skills assistance, grief share meetings and support system improvement. As the Love Our City community outreach events have grown and developed we have been able to provide for the needs of hundreds of families through major community events such as Christmas Outreach, Thanksgiving Outreach, Back to School Blast, July 4th Community event along with other smaller events.

Emergency Housing Program- Our organization is in the process of renovating 3 large buildings on our property that will establish short term emergency housing. Our service area and the portion of Genesee County in Michigan that we serve currently has no established short term emergency housing. Our intent is to open such a facility that would not only provide basic housing, but also use our large number of dedicated volunteers to provide an onsite program dedicated to assisting women regain control of their circumstances and future success and stability. Our facilities will be called a Community Care Complex which will best describe services such as counseling, life skills classes, mentoring, food pantry, baby closet, social events and financial preparedness measures. Providing all of these services on site will allow our team to make meaningful impacts in the future of residents in crisis. Once completing the levels of the program at our facility we will be working with each resident to transition them to another agency that will finalize their action plan and transition the resident to permanent housing.