On Thursday, Strack and Van Til, Ultra Foods, and Town and Country Market presented a $3,000 donation to help sustain and support the Sojourner Truth House and all the work they do and services they provide to homeless and at-risk women and their children. Through hospitality, advocacy, integrative services and collaboration, Sojourner Truth House helps their clients improve their quality of life and that of the community in a safe, trusting environment.
“Sojourner Truth House is definitely a worthy cause and we wanted to help aid their funds,” said Ashleigh Marlow, Public Relations and Centralized Orientation Specialist from Strack and Van Til. “We got a tour and learned more about what they do today. They provide food, clothing and offer their clients different programs. They help them build resumes and get ready for job interviews. They’re doing some really great work here and helping out a lot of people.”
“Every year Strack and Van Til hosts a golf outing where we raise money,” Marlow said. “Our executive management team then gets together and decides where the money will be donated. Sojourner Truth House showed up on that list and I’m here to present them with a donation of $3,000 today.”
Sister Peg Spindler, Sojourner Truth House Executive Director, spoke about the many ways in which Strack and Van Til’s generous donation will be put to good use helping women and families.
“We’ll put it in the general fund but it’s going to help pay security deposits for NIPSCO of households,” Spindler said. “It’s going to help pay our own bills or keep food on our own shelves in our pantry. It will help with education for the women. We have all these line items and sometimes they get a job and they might need scrubs or something like that. We try to be as flexible in our budget as we can be because we don’t want to have to say to a woman, ‘Well, we can’t do that’.”
Spindler spoke on some of the ways that they help women with unique needs. “Their cases and their needs are all so different,” Spindler continued. “A woman comes and says, ‘I don’t know where I was born but I know my parents name’. We then we looked throughout the south because she said she knew she was born in the south and that costs some money, but we found her birth certificate. It took us eight months but we found it! Now the woman knows who she is and is in her own place. Up until that time she lived not knowing who she was, living place to place.”
One client of Sojourner Truth House is Hannah, who has benefited greatly from the all that is offered by the House. From the basic necessities she was provided to the skills she has learned through the programs and classes provided by the Sojourner Truth House, Hannah’s life has been impacted and improved.
“There are some very awesome people here,” Hannah said. “They have groups where I’ve learned to cope with the fact that I’m homeless and I’m learning how to function in the world. My goal is to eventually have my own home.”
The donation from Strack and Van Til will help Sojourner Truth House continue their mission of providing basic necessities for daily survival, training in life skills, referrals to community agencies and on-going support to maintain a stable home.