Our greatest urgency is to help as best we can the large number of homeless children that are an inevitable consequence of job losses and home foreclosures. See OurBetterAngels.info. William Laney was interviewed on BBC8-TV on March 9. Here's his interview on YouTube in four parts: Part I , Part II , Part III , Part IV .

Tues, Feb 20: The Boca Raton clergy association will visit Westgate Tabernacle on Tuesday Feb 20 3-5pm.

Tues, Feb 20: Family Promise of Greater West Palm Beach meets at 7:00 pm at UMC of the Palm Beaches. (driving instructions: exit west from I-95 at Palm Beach Lakes Blvd., turn right at second light which will be Robbins Road, (Comfort Inn will be on right hand corner). Robbins Road quickly ends, then turn left on Brandywine. The church will be soon on the left.)

Current information on both emerging Family Promise networks should always be available at www.familypromisepbc.org.

Thurs, Feb 15: The group some call "faith based" will meet at Thursday noon at the Homeless Coalition to develop strategy about how to build on our momentum.

Our list of local newspaper stories is up to date to provide a means for anyone to understand the current situation.

We have about 6000 names on our petition asking for support for Westgate Tabernacle and are ready to deliver them to the PBC Commission.

Considerations:

• Our purpose is to in a major way improve services to homeless individuals and families. We are very respectful of existing service providers who are doing important work, but we are conscious that need is far greater than available service capacity. We see two avenues to protect or increase the availability of shelter for the homeless.
  1. Protect Westgate Tabernacle's mission. This is important because Westgate Tabernacle is the primary ("de-facto") provider of emergency shelter in PBC.
  2. Start two Family Promise networks where other faith communities will help homeless families. This is important because shelter services to families are seriously lacking, difficult to provide, and because by recruiting volunteers from faith communities we will greatly increase knowlege of homelessness and increase political support.
• To communicate effectively in these two avenues, we need to be conscious of some basic differences. In both avenues we are inviting them to understand homelessness better.
  1. When we invite people to Westgate Tabernacle we are inviting them to believe in Westgate Tabernacle effort and to support it materially and politically. We are asking them to send a check when they get home.
  2. When we invite people to consider a Family Promise program we are inviting them to consider how their church could participate and usually that includes considering how their church could serve as a host congregation. We are asking them to take homeless people home to their faith community.