Dear Friends and Loyal Supporters,
As I reflect upon all we have accomplished this year, I am awe-inspired by the tremendous commitment demonstrated by the passionate men and women who comprise A Safe Haven Foundation and our related entities. It is virtually impossible to name everyone, but I would like to express sincere gratitude to our entire dedicated staff, public/private partners, board members, donors, stakeholders, funders, and volunteers for their incredible displays of love, generosity, and support.
As you can perhaps surmise based upon our record growth of supporters and partners, we are hearing from more leaders of all kinds, people from the community at large, and from people around the world who share our vision and are choosing to join our mission. The importance of eradicating homelessness and addressing poverty in a comprehensive, sustainable manner has never been more pressing or important to all of us at A Safe Haven.
I am deeply grateful that A Safe Haven’s unique, integrated model has earned widespread recognition for benefiting the homeless men, women, and children we serve. The generous recognition we have received this year, and in previous years, is going a long way towards raising awareness and instigating a paradigm shift in how our city, state, and nation think about and address poverty.
Although 2016 proved to be extremely challenging, we have enjoyed many successes. As a quick recap of some of our highlights, we are thrilled that we opened our new A Safe Haven Veteran Village housing development in Melrose Park; hosted our largest 5K RUN! To End Homelessness to date; leveraged more public and private support than ever before; became an accredited certified Illinois Vocational Academic Institution; spearheaded Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s pilot “A Day For Change” initiative; served a record number of homeless citizens, and served as the host site for the Governor of Illinois signing of Historic Bill 3368, just to name a few.
Most of all, because of our supporters and our dedicated team, over 5,000 impoverished and homeless people in crisis received free services to help them get back on their feet. Today, there are thousands more people celebrating this holiday season who are no longer in crisis, but are surrounded by family and friends, living safely housed and gainfully employed. We are grateful to each and every one of you who supported us in 2016. Please know and without you, the work we do would not be possible.
As we look forward to the coming year, we believe more than ever in the strength of our model and the importance of our work. For those of us who live and work in the State of Illinois, we will ring in the New Year without a State budget, meaning that once again, human service providers will go without payment for their contracted services. This action dramatically hampers our ability to provide basic services for the homeless, and forces our team to work harder than ever, with less.
2017 will not be easy, but we resolve to continue the mission to expand our footprint, to inform and build our network of friends and supporters, to reduce the stigma associated with the leading causes of poverty and homelessness, to continue our mission of transforming lives, and to do our part to inspire and to rejuvenate our City, State, and Country, one person at a time.
May You and Your Families Have a Blessed, Healthy & Prosperous New Year!
Neli Vazquez Rowland
Co-Founder and President
