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Hope Haven is a community based non-profit on the Mississippi Gulf Coast that serves our community, children and families via three main programs. We have been incorporated as a non profit and a Mississippi charity for 14 years.
Our Shelter Home Program
For ten years, until Hurricane Katrina struck (August 2005) we operated the only non profit shelter for abused and neglected children in the area. Katrina severely damaged our shelter and every one of our 13 employees lost their homes in the storm. We could not reopen as a shelter but wee quickly repaired our home in Waveland thanks to help from the U.S. Navy CB’s and many volunteers who came from outside of Katrina Land.
In a short two months, our 2,800 square foot home was repaired (the first one in the area) complete with heat/ac and running water/sewage. As all City and County buildings were destroyed, we offered our home to the County Department of Human Services which used it to provide welfare, food stamps and emergency services to local County residents for several months until they moved into temporary trailers. We then used the home to house over 500 volunteer workers from organizations and churches across the nation who came to help our community rebuild. Our 2,000 square foot recreation building was turned into a distribution point for the local community and we passed out over 800 pieces of new furniture, appliances, bedding, household supplies, and two truck loads of new toys and over $35,000 in donated Wal Mart gift cards to children who lost their homes.
In the aftermath of Katrina, the incidence of child abuse and neglect increased by 300 percent. We reopened our Waveland shelter home as a supported foster home utilizing permanent live in house parents rather than shift workers. This arrangement was far better for the children and was a more cost effective way for us to provide a safe refuge for the children who needed us. We pay the salary of our house parents and we pay for all of the expenses of running the home, the vehicles and for all of the expenses associated with caring for the children, including food, clothing, school needs, counseling, etc. We care for an average of six children in our home.
In the fall of 2007, we moved our house parents and children into a 3,500 square foot seven bedroom home located 15 miles inland….out of the flood zone. The kids love it out in the country and we have ten acres, a pond, a barn that we have converted into a great rec space and a wonderful above ground swimming pool and play area! We have placed our Waveland property up for sale as the insurance has doubled on it and we cannot afford to operate and maintain two homes.
Helping Hands Program
We also operate a community assistance program that serves foster children/families in the area and needy children and families. We pay for foster kids to attend summer camps each year and help foster families provide quality care to the children they take into their homes. We help low income families and families in crisis with a wide variety of needs, working closely with other social service agencies to help them. We help provide toys and gifts to needy children every year at Christmas. Over the last three years, we have helped hundreds of families and thousands of children and made their lives a little better.
Future Plans
Hope Haven looks forward to continuing our Helping Hands Program. We were considering opening up a group home that will consist of a cottage for girls and a cottage for boys and allow us to serve up to 12 additional children. However, the current economic situation and the disruption of our donor base caused by Katrina has caused us to hold up on making any final decision on that effort…until we are sure that the funds we need to build the new cottages and keep them open…are available.
NOTICE: HOPE HAVEN IS AN INDEPENDENT COMMUNITY BASED NON PROFIT. WE ARE NOT ASSOCIATED WITH OTHER NATIONAL, STATE OR LOCAL NON PROFIT ORGANIZATION THAT HAVE SIMILAR NAMES SUCH AS "HUB OF HOPE", "HOPE VILLAGE", "HOPE CREDIT UNION", "WALLS OF HOPE" OR "FOUNDATION HOPE."
SPECIAL PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:
“Officially” summer arrives on June 21st. But we are firmly into the summer season along the coast and with the hot weather comes the DANGER OF HEATSTROKE especially to children who are left in cars.
Every year around 1,000 children under the age of 10 are seriously injured or die as a result of being left in an automobile. Some are strangled by the power windows, some crawl into the trunk and don’t know how to get out, some put the car in motion and about 100 of them die a horrible death due to heat stroke.
The temperature inside a car, parked in the shade in summer temperatures here in Mississippi can quickly rise to over 110 degrees within 20 minutes. In direct sunlight, the temperature can rise to over 140 degrees within 10 minutes and the interior of a car with dark interior has been measured as high as 200 degrees. Children are more vulnerable to heat than adults. A child’s core temperature rises up to five times faster than adults. Heat stroke occurs when the body temperature reaches 104 degrees. Cell damage begins at 107 degrees. Death can occur within five minutes after that.
While most of us think that ten minutes is a long time…leaving your child in a car, running into a store, grabbing something, paying for it…can easily eat up that ten minutes….especially if you run into someone you know.
Leaving a child in a car is not safe even if they are older. Several hundred children, as old as 15, are abducted by strangers every year. Some are injured when they were left alone in the car with the engine running…”to keep them cool” and they put the car into gear. And children of all ages left in some older cars with the windows up and the air conditioning on…have been injured or died due to carbon monoxide poisoning due to defects in the automobiles exhaust system and leaks in the cars body.
For parents or others who routinely carry smaller children there are several safety devices that help you remember not to leave a child in the car. They range from reminders that attach to your key chain and cost $4.00 up to high tech devices that sound an alarm when you go more than ten feet away from the car when the car seat is occupied…that cost $65.00. Any price is cheap when it can save a child’s life.
A summer rarely passes in Mississippi that a child is not left in a car…for just a little while, or is left by an adult who forgot the child was in the car…and dies.
Don’t let it be your child. Don’t leave children unattended in a car for any reason.
This public service announcement is brought to you by Hope Haven Children’s Services and the Publisher and Staff of the Sea Coast Echo.
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