City Mission needs your help
The love and support this community has given to City Mission for the past 79 years is unparalleled. You are the reason we now house, feed, clothe and transform the lives of 160 men, women, children, and veterans. You are the reason our programs and services have provided such abiding hope to the homeless in Southwestern PA since 1941.
Right now, we need your help. If the Coronavirus Crisis does not resolve within the next few months, City Mission will have to severely curtail its programs and services to the homeless.
And we are doing so much! Recent statistics show that our overall average success rate for Housing, Employment, Income, Recovery and Spirituality is at an astonishing 66%….and if our residents remain longer than 90 days, it rises to 72%. With your help, we are changing lives!
There’s this big, powerful, old tree behind one of our shelters that was pruned last fall within what seemed an inch of its life. Every time I walked past it, I thought about our residents — bright, beautiful, courageous people, but this life just kept hacking away at them until there was nothing left but surrender. All those cuts changed them and shaped them, and as they slowly come back to life here at City Mission, they grow in ways they never would have before, ways they never knew were possible. Each of those cuts had to happen, had to be that deep and that painful for the transformation to take place.
A new life is not an easy thing to come by. It takes courage, commitment, and sacrifice. I think of our resident, Mike, who was at the end of his rope, holed up in a dinghy hotel room with a gun in his mouth, ready to end it all before he came here to City Mission. I think of Ron who was the General Manager of a car dealership with 80 employees under him, before he lost everything to his addiction, including his family, and ended up homeless on the streets of Canonsburg. I think of Randy, a US Army veteran, who lived for six months in a tent in the woods before finding his way here. Men, women, children, and veterans come to City Mission searching for a new life.
And often, they find it. They find it in Christ. They find it in each other. They find it in the love and compassion of our staff and volunteers.
Five years ago, City Mission fought back from within an inch of our lives after the fire that destroyed much of our existing campus. With your support we were able to rise from those ashes and create a new Mission, bigger and more beautiful than we could have imagined. A Mission that helped to save the lives of hurting people like Mike, Ron, and Randy.
And we’re ready to fight again. Due to the COVID-19 outbreak, we have had to close our City Mission Thrift Stores, an enterprise that generates approximately one-third of our revenue, an enterprise that has long been our effort to build financial sustainability. Since City Mission receives no funding from the federal, state or local government, this loss of 39% revenue for the foreseeable future has hit us very hard.
Now more than ever, we need the support of courageous and compassionate neighbors like you. Just like you helped us so heroically five years ago to overcome the fire, we need your support once again. You are the heart of City Mission! You are the new life waiting to burst forth in this time of uncertainty!
Imagine for a moment that City Mission is the only home you know…and imagine being asked to leave it as doors shut due to lack of funding. Where would you go? How would you survive? With every breath of my being, I do NOT want that to happen. PLEASE HELP US NOW. If you do choose to give, you can do so online at citymission.org, send a check to 84 West Wheeling Street, or call 724-222-8530.
Today, when I walk past that same tree that was pruned last fall, I see powerful branches and the beautiful, emerging buds of new leaves. Together, and with God’s help, we can rise above these troubling times and create an even more beautiful future than we are able to imagine today.
Dean Gartland is the President/CEO of City Mission.