It's a problem; it hurts when it happens to you

This entry to the Faith House Florida blog is written as a guest blog.

The city of St Petersburg has a grant application process which invites organizations like Faith House Florida to apply for a grant of funds to create new programs in an effort to resolve some of the challenges that individuals and families have. The city will grant over $300,000 to multiple groups with each grant being a minimum of $10,000 and a maximum of $40,000 in each of three categories. An organization can apply in each of the three categories.

It is a lengthy process and among other things requires that the organization have an audit of their financial records. The audit for Faith House cost $4,000.

Faith House did go through the process of completing all of the forms which are then given to the city and 9 individuals who are to read through the material, make notes, and score the organization.

Each organization is allowed to request to see the notes and scoring from each individual without knowing who that individual is. When the executive director of Faith House reviewed the notes there was a comment that was very disturbing to me;  "Find a new way to do business".

Faith House Florida went through a number of years in which the skills of the staff could be questioned and the purpose of the organization could be seen as being off track. We are however, confident that in hiring the new executive director, we do have an organization that is fulfilling its mission.

The disappointment with the City of St. Petersburg is that the review is to be based on what is in the forms; definitely not anyone's previous thoughts or experiences.

My thought is this person needs to be disqualified and removed from the process. The city has established a set of guidelines for organizations to follow and then does not honor the guidelines.

Definitely, I will put this before the board of directors of Faith House to suggest we register a protest with the city of St Petersburg and the social action grant process.

Then there is the lesson learned. What about those individuals living at places such as Faith House? What about those individuals who have the challenges that Faith House and other similar organizations work to address?

Aren't these individuals continually judged by friends, family and the community?

The programs of Faith House help an individual, our residents, in learning how to deal with this.

The judgement of these individuals is not fair; nor was it fair for this individual on the social action funding review committee to judge Faith House on its past.

This is why

The cartoon character, Snoopy, was often seen as a writer with the first line of his story being, "It was a dark and stormy night". This was pretty much the situation of the Faith House Florida open house that was held yesterday.

It was a challenge for anyone to get out on that Sunday afternoon. Those that made it got tours of Faith House and Serenity House, and a variety of snacks.

One resident, who has been a resident for only a few days, had family visiting and taking the tour. The young man, about  9 years old, particularly enjoyed seeing the chickens and rabbits. As he and family members were saying goodbye to their relative that is a resident, you could sense that it was a bit of an emotional goodbye for everyone.

Then the resident said, "Grandma has not had a beer in a week. How about that?"

This is why Faith House Florida exists.