This Year’s Goal is $17,900 in Subway Have A Heart Campaign

Last year the Mission received a big check for $7,170, thanks to your support and the 57 local Subway locations and their owners. This year our goal is to provide 10,000 meals, or $17,900 raised. Wow. Big increase. Yes, and we can do it with your one dollar donation every time you visit a Subway in February. Your dollar is match – doubled actually – thanks to this year’s matching sponsors: The Bennett Automotive Group, Embassy bank, Mr. Rooter and S. Agentis Plumbing, and the Morning Call. You get a special coupon when you give! Visit your local Subway, donate $1 to help the Mission, and you will receive a special coupon for a $5 footlong in March.

Photo: This is the check presentation from 2011, and we hope to all be in this picture in March of 2012. Our goal is $17,900, which we can reach with your one dollar donatuiion, and the help from our matching sponsors.

Homeless men need jobs! But where are the jobs?

Executive Director’s message from September, 2011

If homeless men are going to rejoin the community and be self-reliant, they need jobs. The Allentown Rescue Mission has a focus on preparing our homeless clients to live, work and worship in our community.  We do this through our many initiativesof counseling, education, Bible study, workplace readiness, encouraging church membership, helping heal damaged emotions, and resolving problems of their present and past.  The Mission even has low cost apartments to make their first paychecks go further towards their own places to live.  We believe we have an excellent array of services, and a very dedicated staff, helping clients one at a time. But as effective as we are inside the Rescue Mission, eventually it will matter what’s going on outside – in the community and the economy.  And right now, the economy is in a terrible position to receive our men who have worked so hard to change their lives.

Members of the Clean Team, the Mission’s workforce development program, learn job skills and complete a variety of set up and clean up projects throughout the area.

The August employment report was gloomy for the economy as a whole, and dismal for our clients.  In August, and the unemployment rate held at 9.1 percent. The rate has shown
little change since April.  For the Rescue Mission’s job-seeking clients, the broad unemployment rate tells only a small part of the story.

Blacks endure a higher unemployment rate. The Mission helps a significant number of African-Americans who are homeless and seeking to change their lives. Among that group, the unemployment rate is 16.7 percent, almost double the well publicized 9.1% rate.

What about Hispanics?  For that group, the unemployment rate is 11.3 percent, and we see about 200 Hispanics every year in need of our services.

Teens struggle the most!  In our Gateway Center emergency shelter we see many teenagers.  Not all teenagers are in college or technical school after age 18, especially poor teenagers. Some homeless teens have been kicked out of their homes, or have been released from foster care, for example.  Others are just lost as young adults. As they try to find a place in the job market, often with limited skills and experience, they are up against a staggering unemployment rate of 25.4%.

What does a high unemployment rate translate into for these groups, such as homeless blacks, Hispanics and teens? Competition. Fierce competition. The more unemployed people that there are, the more applications there will be for every single job. That includes the jobs our homeless clients are trying to get.