Unseen Campaign launches in March
CONWAY — City of Hope Outreach founder and executive director Phillip Fletcher of Conway said one of the Unseen Campaign’s main goals is to change people’s perceptions of the homeless.
The third annual event will kick off at 12:30 p.m. Saturday with a rally in Rogers Plaza in downtown Conway.
“That will be a good day for people to just come and participate with our banner-hanging, rally and march through downtown,” Fletcher said.
Fletcher said the monthlong campaign aims to educate and inspire people.
“Our intent is, one, you have to make the homeless visible. Let’s remember that they are among us because they are part of our city, but, two, we have to change our perception of the homeless and not automatically assume a negative behavior.”
He said the failed effort in 2015 by another organization to open a homeless shelter in the downtown area revealed a lot.
“Last year, I think homelessness was criminalized,” he said. Fletcher said people often think people are homeless because they committed a crime. “It’s loss of jobs or some other income that makes the person or family unable to provide for their home,” he said.
Fletcher said many people live in good homes and have behavior for which they could be incarcerated, “but they just haven’t been caught.”
He said it’s also a misconception that people want to be homeless. Fletcher said he knows of two or three men in Conway who choose to be homeless, “and we have to honor that,” but the
largest percentage of people do not choose that life.
The annual Point in Time Count that the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development requires was conducted in January by the Toad Suck Coalition for the Homeless. It counted 189 homeless people in Faulkner County, said Judi Lively, director of Bethlehem House homeless shelter in Conway.
“It is higher than in the past,” she said, adding that the number is about 26 more than last year.
She said Bethlehem House has 11 bedrooms and 44 beds. As of last week, the shelter had 36 residents — including single mothers with their children and a couple —with two men’s beds open.
“Generally speaking, over 50 percent of the people we serve are usually [homeless] from an addiction,” she said.
Fletcher said CoHO is partnering with the University of Central Arkansas Outreach and Community Engagement for two events March 18 — one for people who work in homeless and domestic-violence shelters; the other to honor women who live in them. A seminar, Rediscovering Our Strengths, will begin at 9 a.m. at the Brewer-Hegeman Conference Center at UCA. The seminar is designed for people who work in homeless and domestic-violence shelters.
“We want to give people tools to renew their own personal strengths, offering some insights and recommendations into improving their skills,” he said. “This year, we want to obviously focus on those who are homeless, but how can we support those doing the day-to-day ground work?” He said people who work in those environments become invested — and emotionally and physically drained. “They need an atta-boy, atta-girl,” he said.
At 7 p.m. that day, the second annual Evening of Honor is scheduled at UCA Downtown on Oak Street.
Fletcher called it a
“complete women’s event.”
“Our goal is to serve women who are staying at the local shelters here in town,” he said. The event will include a meal, arts-and-crafts projects, music and gifts of cosmetics for the women.
“That’ll be a nice evening for them,” he said.
Another event scheduled for the campaign is a pancake fundraiser from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. March 20 at Stoby’s Restaurant. Proceeds will go to Hope Home of Conway, a CoHO transitional house for men. The men receive support while they find jobs and may stay 120 days.
Fletcher said individuals can support the campaign in several ways, including displaying a purple ribbon at their home, business or church; participating in decorating downtown Conway with purple ribbons; or supporting one of the local shelters in Conway through a volunteer project.
He founded City of Hope Outreach in 2009 in the Oakwood Village mobile-home park. The ministry now serves two other low-income communities in Conway, providing educational support for the children and community-development activities, as well as the transitional housing for men.
For more information about the campaign or CoHO, visit coho58.org or the organization’s Facebook page.