Shreveport-Bossier City is home to more than 900 churches.
A new Shreveport nonprofit aims to unite as many of them as possible to deploy a more coordinated response to assist people who turn to them in crisis.
The FaithWorks board of directors, which formed two years ago, is set to open a call center Tuesday, May 26, that will coordinate resources among churches, according to Laura Vaughan director of discipleship for Broadmoor United Methodist Church and FaithWorks president.
“We found out that on certain nights we were all feeding the same group of homeless people. We decided we were duplicating services, and we didn’t want to use our resources that way. It began out of a collaboration of meeting together and sharing what each church was doing,” Vaughan said.
Community Resource Management is helping FaithWorks develop a database of local churches and document the charitable activities each one carries out. Director Susan Campbell manages the LINCC database, a web-based community platform. She says this searchable asset will map out resources and show where redundancies and gaps are occurring.
“As our economy has changed, people are still in need. Our churches want to serve those in need. Our nonprofits want to serve those in need. How can they all work together to benefit our community with the limited resources they have?” Campbell said.
FaithWorks is hosting what it calls “first responder” training in Shreveport. Tuesday’s sessions are geared toward people who are on the front line assisting homeless and other people who walk into a church in need of help.
The first session is Tuesday, May 19, at First Presbyterian Church beginning at 8:30 a.m. A second training session is set for 6 p.m. at GracePointe Church of the Nazarene.
Seven churches comprise the FaithWorks board. The call center will be staffed by volunteers and located at Hope Connections, a local shelter.
