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An independent nonprofit corporation
since 1984, The Sharing Community currently offers permanent and
transitional housing, substance abuse harm reduction counseling and HIV/AIDS
counseling and testing, prevention education, case management, nutritional
support services and peer support groups in addition to the soup kitchen and
shelter programs with which we began. In collaboration with other
neighborhood institutions, we are also able to offer on-site, health and
mental health clinics.
The Sharing Community began in 1983
as a coordinated response by community and religious groups to the rising
tide of poverty and homelessness in the Getty Square area of southwest
Yonkers. Led by St. John's Episcopal Church, Getty Square, and St. Peter's
Roman Catholic Church, we established a community-based soup kitchen and
homeless shelter program in space borrowed from community churches.
Over the years, the simple soup
kitchen and shelter for the homeless moved into its own facility and
quickly expanded the array of services we offered to meet the changing needs of the communities
of southwest Yonkers. When we moved to our new central service center at 1
Hudson Street recently, we brought with us our comprehensive array of
services which now includes food, housing and eviction prevention, job
training and health and mental health services. As we continue to deliver
services to people in need throughout southwest Yonkers, we strengthen the
relationships we've made over the years and continue to grow together and
connect as a community.
The Sharing Community does much of
its work in collaboration with individuals in the community, with small
community and faith-based groups, with other nonprofit organizations, with
public agencies and with governmental units. These partnerships are complex
collaborations among diverse entities, but with similar commitments. They
enable each of us to do what we do well and to "de-fragment" the system.
More importantly, they enable us to expand the breadth and depths of
services available to the people we serve.
Our
Mission
The
Sharing Community is a non-sectarian minority controlled community-based
organization that seeks to inspire hope where often pain and depression are
real - for people who are ill, who have no home, inadequate food, no job, or
suffer the lack of effective job training. Believing in the dignity of every
person, we accept the responsibility to nurture and care for those in need,
by providing needed services or by linking those in need to services
elsewhere, by seeking to give voice to the needs of the downtrodden, and by
working to enable people to live independently and responsibly, with the
ability to speak clearly their own concerns.
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