“I don’t have enough food to feed my children.”
“My family is going to be homeless.”
“My 7 yr old doesn’t have a winter coat and I just don’t have the money to get her one.”
Can you help? We receive hundreds of calls every month at the Center for Family Services, Inc.
• Our seven Crawford County Food Pantries feed nearly 3,000 adults and children monthly. Community food drives and donations are vital to helping the many who just struggle to feed their families.
• Community donations of gently used clothing and basic household items help local families
living in extreme poverty or experiencing homelessness and many local unemployed adults. Our Thrift Store Clothing and Household program and Best Foot Forward have supplied winter coats, interview and work attire, clothes for families and pots, pans, dishes and bedding for over 2,000 local people every year.
• Helping the neighbors affected by financial hardship. Our Housing Counseling staff assists homeowners facing foreclosure, local families facing eviction, the elderly needing help with a heating bill, and working families struggling due to job loss or illness of a child or spouse.
• Educating our community for a brighter future. We have HUD certified and trained staff to help families gain the skills to manage a household budget in these dicey economic times. Local adults can also receive debt and credit repair assistance. Hopeful first time homebuyers are offered classes and certification mandatory for many financing and down payment programs. This class helps families and their teens learn to communicate and form better family bonds.
• Diapers, formula, back to school supplies, personal care items (shampoo, deodorant, soap, toothpaste and tooth brushes), cleaning supplies and paper goods. All these items are given to local families in need and all of them are donated or purchased with donated funds. Your support will help local families, in need, in our County. Giving isn’t just about reaching in your wallet. Organizing a food drive or coat drive, donating your gently used clothing and small household items to our Thrift Store, picking up an extra bar of soap or tube of toothpaste at the store, letting others know about the good things you are helping to make happen in our community, these are things that make change happen too. Financial support helps put the coat on a child and food in his belly. The donations help pay the kind voice at the other end of the phone telling a desperate 90 year old woman that we will find a way to help keep her heat on. The family facing foreclosure has an advocate to work with the mortgage company and to find any alternative to save their home. Financial support of the Center means helping with real things like food and clothing and real, caring people to help those with no where else to turn. Thank you for giving. Giving of your time, your money, your creativity and your hopes for a better tomorrow for all of our friends and neighbors.
