The Morning Journal (Lorain, OH)
We Care We Share Ministries on the hunt for building
Organization looking to expand services
A Lorain nonprofit is looking to expand its services from giving a hand out to giving a hand up.
We Care We Share Ministries, 1888 E. 31st St., is reaching out to organizations and businesses in the area in an effort to find another building to open a workforce development program as a part of its services.
By giving local people the soft skills they need, the nonprofit’s representatives said this type of program may provide revitalization and relief to the area.
“We want to become all things to all people, whatever the skills they’re going for are,” said the Rev. Matt Raines, a We Care We Share board member and pastor of New Beginnings: A Church of Christ for All. “The idea is to get them prepared, whether it’s computers, whether it’s a trade, a job in communications, anything it might be.”
We Care We Share president Bill Hurley said the organization is getting in contact with potential partners like banks, mortgage companies, community development agencies and businesses looking for employees.
“We want to work with any city, any bank, any mortgage company, to get a house,” Hurley said. “We want to rehabilitate that house.
“And during the rehab process, we can teach people the different skills. And whether they stay with us or not, we will make them employable.”
We Care We Share is looking at obtaining a grant and is on the lookout for a potential house to remodel and use for the
program.
Currently, Hurley said We Care We Share is open to having the building in any city in the county.
“We’re just open to anything because I would rather have these people coming in here saying, ‘I wanna be part of that program’ instead of coming in for a food box,” he said.
As an additional part of helping residents build soft skills, the agency is in the beginning stages of integrating an English language program to help non native English speakers with their communication skills.
Raines said teaching Lorain’s residents soft skills eventually will prove more successful than bringing outside business in.
“If you really want to revitalize an area, you don’t just throw wealthy people in there,” he said. “You resource the people that are there and that’s what We Care wants to become.”
Additional expansion includes a grant recently received for a greenhouse, which will grow produce for cooking demos and food pantry.
Hurley said providing people with skills and getting them out the food pantry’s doors is the next step for the organization.
“Lorain’s been forgotten,” Raines said. “That’s where We Care We Share comes in.
“We say, ‘No, we remember you, and not only do we remember you, we want to move that narrative of sparsity and purposelessness, into more revitalization.’”