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Project HOPE Takes Steps To Incorporate

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By D'ANN LAWRENCE WHITE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 24, 2007

Updated: 10/22/2007 07:22 pm

BRANDON - A new organization whose mission is to help the homeless is looking for a permanent home, and it's a step closer to its goal now that it has bylaws and articles of incorporation. This achievement came with help from Brandon lawyer Thomas Gill and accountant Vince Ferraro, also of Brandon.

Formed this year, Project HOPE - an acronym for Helping Other People Excel - is a coalition of Brandon area faith and civic organizations. The articles of incorporation will establish the group as a legal Florida nonprofit organization, and the bylaws will establish a board of directors, officers and committees.

Gill and Ferraro presented the paperwork to members of Project HOPE Thursday morning for review.

The organization's first priority is to set up a soup kitchen to be operated six days a week by a coalition of six Brandon area church or community organizations. The coalition, to be called Greater Brandon Ecumenical Ministries, agreed to have 12 directors, two from each of the six groups.

They include First Presbyterian Church of Brandon, Nativity Catholic Church, Bay Life Church, Concerned Action InChrist, Apostles Lutheran Church and the River of Life United Methodist Cluster, made up of seven United Methodist churches.

Project HOPE member Don Heald said members have been pursuing leads for a soup kitchen site in the central Brandon area where the group can feed Brandon's estimated 2,000 homeless people. Since founding Project HOPE, Heald said he has had many offers from people wanting to donate supplies, but without a place to store them, what he can accept is limited.

Heald and fellow Project HOPE member Buddy Bass have been feeding the homeless from 9 to 11 Saturday mornings at a temporary site, a field north of the Church of the Nazarene at 114 Kingsway Road in Brandon. The group needs more hot dishes and help serving, Heald said.

Project HOPE also is working with Cynthia Pinckney Ministries, which feeds the homeless monthly at day labor facilities in Seffner, Able Body Labor at 12006 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. and Labor Finders at 129 Cook St. in Seffner. Pinckney, in conjunction with the area's Methodist churches, also hosts Thanksgiving and Christmas meals for the homeless.

This year's Thanksgiving dinner will take place Nov. 22 at the Bill Carey Unit of the Boys & Girls Club at 123 N. Knights Ave., Brandon. Last year more than 250 men, women and children dined at the club on Thanksgiving.

For information about the Thanksgiving dinner, call Pinckney at (813) 571-1556. Anyone wishing to join Project HOPE or help feed the homeless can call Heald at (813) 689-9552. Anyone with property to donate or lease for use as a soup kitchen can call Tim Black of First Presbyterian Church of Brandon at (813) 689-4597.

Reporter D'Ann Lawrence White can be reached at (813) 657-4524 or dlwhite@tampatrib.com.

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