Connect with community at event

Mat-Su Homeless Connect has brought our community together to provide services for the homeless as well as families confronting economic crisis. An event will be held at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesday.

Mat-Su Homeless Connect is designed to engage people experiencing homelessness and connect them with a variety of available services and resources that may otherwise feel out of reach for them. The event will welcome homeless men, women and children to the Menard Sports Complex for a variety of resources, such as housing providers, employment, senior and veteran services, food and clothing. The event is a one-day, one-stop project designed to connect individuals in need to services and supports, as well as mobilize the community around the issue of homelessness in our community. But this is also about a commitment to move from simply managing homelessness toward ending homelessness.

Project Homeless Connect is identified by the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness as an innovation that moves people more quickly toward housing and stability and furthers the goals of community 10-year plans. Revitalized by President Bush in 2002, its mission is to develop and implement a comprehensive national strategy to end chronic homelessness in the United States.

Project Homeless Connect began in San Francisco in 2004 and has grown into a nationwide best practice with great potential for getting homeless people off of the streets and into more stable situations.

It goes without saying that all of this could not be accomplished without the tireless efforts of the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness Housing Connect Task Force, Mayor Verne Rupright, all of the outreach of our citizens wanting to volunteer their time and of course our vendors that signed up to serve this vulnerable population.

Stephanie Campbell is with the Mat-Su Coalition on Housing and Homelessness.