The $450,000 community development block grant award from the Montana Department of Commerce is being matched with nearly $440,000 raised privately by Good Samaritan Ministries.
One of Our Place’s clients speaks with Phoenix O’Connor at KTVH about living with mental illness and the shortage of healthcare providers
https://www.ktvh.com/news/us-news/two-americas/montana-seeing-a-shortage-of-mental-health-providers
This article was published about Ryan Lehman, Good Samaritan’s Street Outreach Coordinator, in Florence Crittenton’s 2020 Annual Report about his journey through sobriety and getting custody of his kids back full-time. We are so proud of how far he has come and so grateful to call him part of our team! Click below to read the full article!
All of you that help support Good Samaritan are helping us fight this. Every day we are working to get the homeless into shelter, the addicted proper treatment to prevent jails, institutions, and death. YOU help give the hopeless hope and the tools for a better tomorrow. THANK YOU.
https://www.city-journal.org/olympia-washington-mental-hospitals
St. Pete’s works with Good Samaritan to provide safe stable housing to those in need
Together, Courtney and Sue filled out dozens of applications for housing. And, Courtney helped connect Sue to Good Samaritan Ministries, a local nonprofit committed to providing services to meet the physical, social, emotional and spiritual needs of individuals and families of all faith, especially those most in need. Good Samaritan was able to provide housing vouchers and support thanks to a grant from the CARES Act.
“When I first met Sue, she was going through a lot. She was experiencing lots and lots of emotions related to her medical concerns, on top of the housing stress,” said Courtney. “I was able to connect her to our behavioral health professionals and then get her connected to temporary housing through a grant from Good Samaritan. Those have been the most beneficial things in the time that we’ve worked together.”
Good Samaritan is recognized by the U.S. Census Bureau as an invaluable member of the 2020 Census Community Partnership and Engagement Program.
One afternoon an HPD officer called and asked Good Sam’s team to go check on a particular gentleman living under the walking bridge close to Exploration Works. When we found this gentleman, he was wet, and so cold he could not move. He really was freezing to death! Wet, freezing and in pain from frostbite, our team loaded him up and took him straight to GSM Thrift Store for warm clothes as well as food to get through the first night. Instead of putting back outside, he was taken to a hotel to start his journey back to health and society…and this is when the work began. The teamwork for this very vulnerable individual in our community.
Good Samaritan was given an electric wheelchair for someone in need; we gave it to this man who had lost part of a finger from the spokes in his manual wheelchair. Thank you to the donor, it found a home and made someone very happy. This man had frostbite so bad on his hands that he could not grasp things. He has such severe frostbite he had multiple treatments a week scraping off the frostbite from skin. And he does it with a smile on his face, happy to be alive, and grateful for the help.
This man, as we got to know him, is the kindest, sweetest most amazing guy you could ever meet. How in the world had things slipped so bad to put him in this situation with nowhere to turn, nowhere to go, and no known family or friends to help? We ALL jumped in for his different needs and blended together for his progress. We all went to work for him! One of our team members continued getting food for him and transporting him to medical appointments for serious conditions. He was a victim of his social security money being continuously stolen, together he and staff worked on getting a new payee so he could actually see his own money. Every single one of our team members came together to work with him on different needs. He was so thankful and happy to work with the Good Sam team, a smile on his face, happy to be alive, and grateful for the help.
This is the reason we do what we do, we strive to make the lives of those who cross our paths better. They are worth it, and they certainly deserve it! And you, our donors help us make these changes in everyday lives.
The smile on his face will shatter your heart. It was so wide, full, and beautiful, just like a Montana moon! These acts of kindness still exist today. Changing lives for the better is something neighbors helping neighbors can do.
God empowers all, especially those who are vulnerable, to stand up for themselves and protect their dignity. Subsidiarity—the participation of the people directly affected by a problem in the solution-making process—is a way for us to affirm the dignity of all persons, especially at home in our communities. A key element of breaking the cycle of poverty is empowering low-income and vulnerable communities to learn how to raise their own voices and practice self-determination. In Catholic social teaching, subsidiarity is always paired with solidarity. Higher powers or institutions, such as government, must provide help and resources so that communities have the resources to address the problems that affect them.
