Having Fun on a Sunday
The scope of services Project Dignity’s provides is broad and continually evolving. We don’t fit into any particular category. We constantly adjust what we do, based on the difficulties our families face in their daily lives. We fit our services to their ever changing needs, not the other way around.
We go to our clients. We don’t make them come to us because we acknowledge that with poverty often comes a lack of transportation.
Life is enough of a struggle when you are homeless. We don’t offer services our clients can’t get to.
We want to be a solution, not yet another barrier. We do everything humanly possible (and oftentimes the impossible) to ease the frustration and desperation of their lives.
We don’t feel anyone can ever fully understand the motel situation. We believe we understand it better than most. To our knowledge we are the only local organization who is focusing on serving solely on the homeless population living in residential motels and we’ve been doing it since 1996.
Dyeing Easter Eggs
And we’re still learning. As our clients get to know us—they participate in support programs that help with school, work and daily living needs.
It’s a long haul from homelessness to home, so our programs “wraparound” the challenges. Our first objective is to ease the burdens of daily living for our clients by assisting with necessities most of us take for granted—food, clothing and hygiene items. These programs serve over 500 families monthly.
We’re very sorry but we can’t provide motel vouchers or money for motel rent.
We assist our clients until they gain the job raises and promotions necessary to afford an apartment. This process and the length of time required differ for each family. We’re committed to staying with them as long as it takes.
In a nutshell, it is our mission to provide whatever assistance we can to the families we serve. It is our goal to help them blossom and develop the self-sufficiency needed to no longer require our services. Our proudest day comes when our homeless friends can say “Good Bye! ”.
Making Mother’s Day Cards
We may see some families only once. Others we may continue to serve for years. Either way our purpose is to help our clients to experience a relief from the stresses and terrors of being homeless and hungry. The more stress we can allay, the better able our clients are to think and plan their way out of homelessness.
Our programs work because we don’t have an agenda based on our expectations. We aren’t the experts. The people we serve are.
We know the only way to be successful is to listen to our clients. They determine what they need, not us.
Our success is measured not by how many we serve, but by how well we serve them. We constantly adjust what we do based on what we observe and hear.
The day we think we have it all figured out will be the day we should quit because it will mean we’ve stopped listening and caring.
We’re sorry but we only provide services at 20 local motels in Orange County. We wish we could respond to all requests for help, but unfortunately we can’t.
