By Delayna Earley
The Island News
Family Promise of Beaufort County has a lot to celebrate this month.
Earlier in August, the organization opened the first shelter for homeless families with children that services Beaufort County.
The organization purchased a home in Hardeeville that they have named “The Freedom House” that they converted into a shelter that can house up to eight families, according to executive director Tamika Blake.
According to their website, “this allows our families to receive a safe night’s sleep while they transition from homelessness to a home.”
The shelter will service both Beaufort and Jasper Counties.
People who are eligible to be serviced in their shelter program are parents or legal guardians with minor children who are homeless or in imminent risk of becoming so.
Families must be willing to temporarily reside in a supervised communal living environment and the parents or legal guardians much be able to maintain fulltime employment.
Blake said that the goal is to help these families in their time of need while they get back on their feet.
Families who reside in the shelter can do so for 120 days before they need to move out, hopefully into their own home.
Black said that prior to COVID-19, the organization would set up in churches, but after COVID-19 hit, churches declined to allow them to do that anymore.
For the past four years the organization has been helping homeless families in need by allowing them to stay in a hotel, but she said they knew that was not a permanent solution.
They originally wanted to build, but finding property was challenging and other options fell through as well.
They started to look into single family homes that would be able to be converted for their uses, and that is how they found the location in Hardeeville.
While this was a step in the right direction, Blake said that there is still so much that they need to be able to offer the care that these families need.
Most of the families that come to them do not have their own mode of transportation, and previously the organization used a bus to drive the homeless families around, but it is no longer running.
Blake said that the next important item that they need to acquire is a replacement for the bus, which she is hoping will be a 14-person van.
“With a van, anyone can operate it and they don’t need a CDL license,” Blake said.
Donations can be made to Family Promise of Beaufort County through https://familypromisebeaufortcounty.org/donation-information/.
Delayna Earley, joined The Island News in 2022, formerly worked as a photojournalist for The Island Packet/The Beaufort Gazette, as well as newspapers in Indiana and Virginia. She can be reached at delayna.theislandnews@gmail.com.
