Mission needs your help

Stubbornly high unemploy- ment and poverty rates in the Mahoning Valley continue to squeeze much of the joy out of today’s Christmas holiday for many struggling to get by day to day.

Nowhere is that distress on more prominent display than at the Rescue Mission of the Mahoning Valley, a compassionate resource our community has been blessed to have within it for decades.

For more than a century, the mission has been saving the lives and souls of tens of thousands. Just ask Lashonda, whose last name has been withheld to protect her privacy. She and her three young children were featured in a front-page story on homelessness in the Valley recently in The Vindicator. They have found refuge and hope at the Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard facility.

She and her children escaped a life of poverty, violence and drug addiction all around them. Through the mission’s help, she has enrolled in nurse-assistant classes and is on course to graduate, find a job, better housing and a better life.

Lashonda’s story is not unique. Struggling families have become a rapidly growing segment of its clientele.

Unfortunately, the mission itself has faced struggles of its own. Families as large as eight must crowd into very small rooms. Plumbing and other structural deficiencies create health and safety problems.

Over the past decade, the number of overnight stays has nearly doubled from 23,000 to 43,498 in 2016.

To remedy those shortcomings, the mission launched a community fundraising drive called “Move Our Mission” to raise sufficient capital to build a state-of-the art shelter behind the former South High School.

The campaign has raised all but $1.6 million of the $4.25 million needed to make the move a reality.

Compassionate residents can do their part on this holiday of giving by contacting the mission this week to make a monetary pledge and a promising investment in the human capital of our region.