The Next Step Foundation, an Apopka ministry, reviewed its plan for launching its central resource hub that would serve homeless people in the foundation’s effort to address the community’s homelessness issue.
Church members and Next Step Foundation board members gathered at a Tuesday, October 26, meeting at First Presbyterian Church of Apopka on South Highland Avenue.
Sheryl Manche, a real estate agent and member of Remnant Christian Center, presented the concept of the Apopka Resource Center (ARC) at the meeting. According to the proposal she gave, the ARC’s initiative will aim to not only provide homeless clients with food, clothes, financial support, and other needs but, more so, support an inward transformation so the clients can work toward becoming self-sufficient.
Manche said she put the presentation together at the request of Pastor David Schorejs, senior pastor of First Baptist Church of Apopka, and Apopka Mayor Bryan Nelson. Nelson is a member of the Next Step Foundation’s board of directors.
Manche’s presentation was based on her file of everything the Next Step Foundation has done over the past three years, she said.
The ARC will lend support in the following four pillars: economic empowerment, educational advancement, health and wellness, and character and leadership. By addressing what she called the four pillars of support, ARC will strive to be transformative – meaning to renew their minds and outlook – rather than transactional, or just assisting the homeless with emergency needs that don’t build their self-sufficiency.
Finalized as a non-profit entity in 2019, the Next Step Foundation is an expansion of the First Baptist Church of Apopka’s weekly homeless ministry that services homeless people by giving them dinner, clothes, grooming, and Bible study. The foundation will leverage resources and helping hands of other churches and the general community to further assist the homeless.
The full story begins on page 1A of the Friday, October 29, issue of The Apopka Chief. Subscribe!
The Apopka Chief and The Planter are weekly community newspapers, independently owned and family operated, that have served the greater Apopka area in Central Florida since 1923 and 1965 respectively.
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