A Permanent Home for SYM!

There is a lot to do between now and then, but we will have a permanent facility starting Jan. 1! We have the opportunity to keeping an facility from closing. It's one that clients have been coming to for years. And it's located inside a church that has been loving West Campus for decades. This is a fantastic answer to prayer, but it means lots of planning and change! We are committed to our clients and to helping them see the changes they want in their lives. Here is a rough timeline for our new facility:

Nov 1 -- We have begun listening sessions with our clients. We want to know what things SYM currently does that they don't want to see change, and what the facility we are taking over does that they want to see change.

Nov 21 -- We'll announce a merged schedule of daily activities during the week of Thanksgiving. The new activities will begin in January.

Nov 28 -- We will start training in the facility by serving side by side with the existing staff. This will allow us to signal change and better learn how to keep this new facility running. To do this, we must hire one new person. We'll also have to modify our existing service in December in order to hold this important training period.

Dec 22 -- The old facility will close for the holidays. We will assume its operation at that point.

Jan 6 -- We'll reopen the facility as Street Youth Ministry Drop-in. We'll need daily volunteers, food volunteers, canned food donations, and a whole lot more prayer support! We intend to continue our Prayer Time, Shower Time/Computer Lab, and Clothing Closet where they are located now, although possibly with adjusted times.

This is what the church looked like many decades ago.
Even then the basement was used for recovery meetings and healing!

We have many weekend projects to accomplish in December, January and February to improve this facility. Please pray we get lots of community help to manage these improvements and changes needed to help us operate the facility more efficiently.

We also have a big fundraising challenge in front of us. Taking on this new facility requires us to raise $220,000 new dollars for the first two years. That's a huge bump in our budget. By the end of two years, we should have ongoing fundraising in place to sustain operation. Please pray that we find solid partners to help us keep this facility open for the next two years!

Anyone can donate at donate.StreetYouthMinistry.org. Just mention dropin in the purpose field and we'll apply your gift to keeping this facility open!