Salvation Army offers many ways to help those in need

By Las Vegas Sun Staff (contact)

Saturday, April 7, 2018 | 2 a.m.

What does your organization do? We offer many programs for the underserved and marginalized in our community.

Our Homeless Services include overnight shelters, the only transgender safety dorm in the area, a free community meal daily and inclement weather shelter. We offer vocational training, featuring a Culinary Arts training program in conjunction with the College of Southern Nevada, along with other training and basic job skills. Our goal there is to take individuals off the streets, help them train so they can find work and keep that position, transition into one of our Lied Apartments for up to a year, and then be able to move on to their own home.

Our family services office has a food pantry that operates like a grocery store, where clients select the items their family will eat. That location also offers utilities assistance and rental assistance, depending on the availability of funds, as well as seasonal and back-to-school assistance. We have a rapid rehousing office to help the homeless get off the streets. Our Seeds of Hope program works with victims of human trafficking.

We work with homeless veterans offering transitional housing, medication management and coordination of treatment and services.

Our Adult Rehabilitation Center provides a free six-month, live-in work therapy program for men and women fighting addiction.

When and why was it established? The Salvation Army was established in London in 1865. It is an offshoot of the Methodist Church, started by William Booth, a pastor who felt compelled to meet the

needs of the poor and hungry on the streets of his city. After several years of serving those people with “soup, soap and salvation”­—knowing they would not hear preaching if they were hungry and dirty—Booth realized it would take an army to meet the needs of all. And the Salvation Army was created. Those with military titles are graduates of our training colleges, seminaries really, and are in the ministry. The social services and the church operate hand-in-hand and have since its inception.

Who are its clients today? The people we serve come from every social strata and all walks of life. It is impossible to know what will bring an individual or family to a place of need—a lost job, an illness, an addiction—so we share the Gospel and the love of Christ by meeting human needs without discrimination. That is our mission.

What are its current initiatives or goals? Although all of our programs are ongoing and vital, our veterans services, Seeds of Hope for victims of human trafficking, and our vocational culinary training are probably garnering the most attention.

What services might the community not know about? Because victims of human trafficking need to stay as unobtrusive as possible, for both legal and safety reasons, it is difficult to promote our Seeds of Hope program. But we are always in need of funding and committed volunteers for that work.

What is the greatest success you’ve been a part of? Every life that is changed, every person who moves from addiction to sobriety, every family that goes from homelessness to a place of their own—making a difference in people’s lives is how we define success.

What can people do to get involved in the cause you serve? There are two major ways for people to get involved. The first is to give their time by volunteering for one of our programs—serving the daily community meal on a monthly or weekly basis, greeting guests and helping at our food pantry, working during our Christmas season, either by ringing a kettle bell for a shift or two or by helping with the toy distribution for our needy families. The other way is through financial support, whether for our work in general or by giving to support a specific program.

This story originally appeared in the Las Vegas Weekly.