With grants from the Ontario Trillium Foundation, Reaching Home, St. Thomas-Elgin Community Foundation and Libro Credit Union, Fresh Start’s 2022 House of Homes project will break ground on four new affordable, supportive apartments for at-risk families. But like any commodity being transformed into a living spirited work of community, capable hearts are required as much as capable hands.

 

Thirty-four years of guiding families toward a solid foundation has taught us a few things. One of them is that children growing up in traumatic environments are more likely to experience mental illness, turn to intravenous drugs to cope, and have children of their own at a young age, which perpetuates the cycle of suffering and systemic dependence.

 

With an eye to severing the intergenerational cycle of trauma that keeps many communities locked into ever-increasing law-enforcement, criminal-justice, social, and health-care budgets, Fresh Start, embodies the timeless wisdom that compassion is the common sense strong communities are built upon.

 

By supporting this year’s House of Homes capital campaign, you join a group of people committed to creating safe, supported homes. You join us in fostering the notion of home in the larger sense — the community sense — as a place where even strangers care for one another, and prosperity is the reward for prioritizing people.