Meet Roger

Family Promise of Waukesha County has over 1,000 volunteers. Most of these individuals serve through their congregation. This means that when their faith community hosts families they make or serve meals, offer fellowship, sleep overnight in the Church or help with set-up or take down. Other volunteers help with mailings, drive the van, assist with administrative tasks, or participate on a committee, and many more tasks.

Periodically we recognize a volunteer (or three.) This is NOT to say that their service is better than anyone else. It is to acknowledge the goodness of people. It also is to acknowledge that this organization relies almost 100% on the generosity of others. This is good news! We are extremely happy and fortunate to have all of our volunteers. Remember for every volunteer we acknowledge there are 1000 more who offer similar service to families experiencing homelessness.

In this edition we recognzie Roger Newton. Most recently Roger has helped build cabinets, paint our new facility and has helped remove enormous cubicles. He is a member of the Helping Hands Project at Our Savior Evangelical Lutheran Church in Oconomowoc. Not only has he come to help himself- he has recruited others to join him. Our new maintenance crew is going to be instrumental to caring for our new location. We have deep gratitude to Roger and all those who have just begun.

HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED WITH FAMILY PROMISE? Through our church, Our Savior Lutheran Church in Oconomowoc. The coordinators, Ann Corning, and Laura Seipel, did a wonderful job communicating the Family Promise vision and recruiting church members to help support the families when they were staying at our church. WHAT IS IT ABOUT FAMILY PROMISE THAT MADE YOU WANT TO VOLUNTEER? The need to help and support families that are without a home and are looking for a path forward. WHAT WAYS HAVE YOU VOLUNTEERED AT FAMILY PROMISE? Many opportunities to volunteer exist. I stayed overnight when the families were at our church. I helped my wife prepare and serve meals to the families. At our church we have a group of retires that do projects around the church. So we built some storage cabinets at the Wales center. Recently, three other church members and I have been helping with projects at the new Waukesha location. WHAT HAS BEEN REWARDING ABOUT YOUR SERVICE? It feels good when we hear that families have moved forward and found housing, and in some cases a needed job. It is also fun to work with fellow Christians to accomplish a common goal and help others. WHAT CHALLENGES DO YOU SEE? The challenge right now is to help Family Promise continue to move forward during this difficult Covid-19 crisis.