Ric Pawloski is the executive director of the Ferry Street Resource Center in Niles. He can be reached at directorfsrc@gmail.com.

Anniversaries are usually a time for great celebration. We want to celebrate another year of some positive life event, most often our blessed union with our spouse. This month, I am not celebrating another year of being married to the most amazing woman in the world (my wife, Vicki). That I will do next August, although I celebrate this every day! November is the month I celebrate two other very important anniversaries for the first time.

November was the month that I started a new journey that has proven to be one of the most rewarding of my life. This is the month that I started the Gateway to Greatness program in Niles through Gateway Services teaching the Jobs for Life curriculum. As I began to immerse myself in the Niles community and pray for God’s guidance, I was also led to take on the responsibility of Executive Director of the Ferry Street Resource Center. Both were unexpected but quickly a perfect fit. I had been involved in building a Jobs for Life program in Benton Harbor and seen many amazing people that had barriers to employment such as past incarcerations, felony records, employment gaps driven by life challenges past addictions and a diminished sense of self driven by all of this, make dramatic changes in their life. As I pursued the establishment of that program in Niles, I became aware of the Ferry Street Resource Center opportunity and was excited to start as their new executive director in the same month.

A lot has transpired in that year, and the work on both fronts has produced some terrific results as we see lives being changed through FSRC and the Gateway to Greatness program. FSRC has added five additional resident resources that are available to clients at the Center. In our last fiscal year that ended in June 2019, we saw almost 2,300 individual requests for assistance of some type. Starting in July, we began tracking how many different individuals have come to FSRC for assistance and as of the end of September, that number stood at 416! We have been able to find work for many, assisted in getting homeless individuals off the street, provided emergency assistance for utilities, and have seen several people who no longer need us because they have developed sustainable lifestyles through our “Building Bridges to Opportunity and Sustainability” program. We couldn’t do this without the generous support of many people, but the needs continue to increase. This fiscal year, we are on pace to see over 2,800 client visits.

Please consider FSRC for your year end giving and/or regular giving. We are going to establish a giving platform on our website soon, but in the meantime, contact me at (269) 357-7319 or you can mail checks to FSRC, 620 Ferry St., Niles, MI 49120. Please write in the memo line whether you want to support BBOS or G2G. We are looking forward to what we can do for those that visit us this fiscal year. Thank you for your support as we continue our efforts to change lives in 2019/2020.