There is no uglier thing than to lose your purpose in your work. Losing your way to politics, anger, agency or self-preservation, becoming entitled, complacent, lazy, uninspired; in the human services world, this is the stuff that kills people.
At WVCEH, on the worst of days, we all understand what our purpose is: to do our best to make sure people don’t die on the streets. From our responsibilities as the State Coalition, the Lead Agency for the WV Balance of State Continuum of Care, the Lead Agency for the Client-Level database, or our work doing street outreach and providing housing for people, this purpose guides every decision we make.
It’s not always easy, but anyone can be housed. And housing people is the only way we’ll end homelessness. We’re committed to assisting agencies who don’t take homelessness lightly, and we’re committed to our communities in West Virginia where homelessness is either a prevalent or hidden issue. We’re committed to ending homelessness in West Virginia.
The greatest indicator of our success would be the need for our organization to no longer exist. That’s what we work toward; our own demise. This has the effect of getting ourselves out of our own way and allowing us to focus on our mission, despite any distractions. We focus on housing. We focus on moving quickly, effectively, and efficiently. We focus on utilizing public and private money in such a way that anyone could look at our books and give us a thumbs up, from the federal worker, to the legislator, to the average taxpayer.
We are ever-changing, and ever-driven to build a system of housing and care that can make homelessness a thing of the past; or certainly homelessness as we currently know it. If any of this sounds interesting to you, then we welcome you to reach out to us as a partner. If any of this sounds crazy to you, then we may not be your cup of tea. No matter what, we’ll be here. Diligently, unfalteringly, we will be here. Ending homelessness, making progress, failing, refining, and trying again and again to make things better.
