Promoting Self-Sufficiency

Our Goals:

• Individuals gain and sustain employment.
• Employers have access to an appropriately educated, accountable, and dependable workforce. Individuals live in secure, safe, affordable housing.
• Individuals develop fundamental life skills (e.g., reading, financial management) to be independent and productive in society and contribute to a stable family life.
• Everyone travels safely and affordably within the community when and where they need to.

Vision Council Initiatives

The Promoting Self-Sufficiency Vision Council has recently led an effort to study transportation needs in the Greater Kingsport area. In addition, the group is launching a study to identify major root causes of unemployment as well as building a network of agencies to improve communication of services available in the community.
 

Member Agency Programs

Brown Annex (John R. Hay House): $41,000
Offers a special needs facility for male offenders which provides structured residential treatment services for adult felony offenders twenty-four hours a day for offenders who have special needs & would otherwise be incarcerated.

Frontier Industries (Frontier Health): $66,000
Offers vocational, employment, residential, developmental & community integration services to individuals who have developmental, emotional, and/or physical disabilities.
 
Hope House Fresh Start Program: $15,433
Reaches out with love & support to moms & babies in our community with what they need to grow, succeed & become self-sufficient.

Hope House Restart Program: $11,933
Assists homeless single pregnant women, as well as new mothers and their babies with all they need (including housing) to advance scholastically & become financially independent.

Hosanna House (John R. Hay House): $35,000
Offers a special needs facility for female offenders which provides structured residential treatment services for adult felony offenders twenty-four hours a day for offenders who have special needs & would otherwise be incarcerated.

Interfaith Hospitality Network Family Self-Sufficiency Program: To Be Funded in 2013
Enhances the lives of homeless in Northeast Tennessee and Southwest Virginia by providing families with children temporary shelter and assistance to become self-sufficient.

Literacy Council of Kingsport: $29,434
Tutoring Program helps adults & children improve their literacy skills or to learn to speak & read English through one-on-one tutoring with trained volunteers.

Small Miracles Therapeutic Equestrian Center Horses 4 Heroes Program: To Be Funded in 2013
Provides equestrian assisted therapy to veterans diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

“Often times they are in a life-change point, where something has happened that made them say ‘I’m going to do something about this now. I’m going to come in here and I’m going to confront this and I’m going to learn how to read or get better with my English, depending on what it is they are working on. It takes a lot of courage to walk in that door and it takes a lot of commitment and I really admire that so much. These are people that are sort of heroes to me. I really admire them.” — Rhoda Bliese, Literacy Council Tutor

“It means a lot to me to be able to come here and try to learn what I didn’t learn as a kid. I have learned a lot in the last year and a half or two years that I have been here. I wrote a Mother’s Day card to my mom and I never wrote anything for my mom. It meant more to me to do that than anything in the world.” — Dennis Taylor, Literacy Council of Kingsport client