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Rebecca Ellis and Nancy Hurst are founders of “Raise of Hope”, a new community center in Cattaraugus, NY.

On this week’s Hometown Heroes on Family Life, you will hear how the Lord placed a vision before our guests, which then blossomed into a community center for artists, a farm-to-table market, and a transitional residence for teens moving from foster care into the early stages of their adulthood.

The Raise of Hope community center also can host entrepreneurs, county services, church events, and a private professional counseling practice.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:16 — 7.2MB)

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This week’s Family Life Hometown Hero is Joe DeMarco, founder of Wings Flights of Hope, based out of Orchard Park, New York.

Wings Flights is a free volunteer service which flies seriously ill patients and their families to out-of-town medical appointments. Transplant recipients and injured military members are key recipients of this ministry. This service is especially crucial when timing provides only a short window of opportunity to begin the medical treatment to receive organ transplants.

 

 

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:47 — 8.0MB)

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Meet Dr. Myron Glick, whose Buffalo-based Jericho Road Health Center lives out the Biblical mandate to provide care to sick and wounded travelers.

Dr. Glick was born in Pennsyvlania, moved to New York, and as a child lived in the Central American country of Belize, where is parents were church-planting missionaries. On that mission field, he sensed is calling to go to medical school.

Now he operates the clinic which provides health care for Buffalo’s growing refugee community, asylum seekers, and many others who could not otherwise afford medical services.

 

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:29 — 7.5MB)

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When Julie Chapus answered her phone, she was unaware that the distraught young woman on the other end would be her first contact with a pervasive human rights issue happening in Rochester — human trafficking.

“Miss Julie’s School of Beauty” is a new outreach for victims of human trafficking. The innovative program provides cosmetology training to empower survivors. The training helps those in the Rochester area and also draws survivors from many other areas.

Meet Julie Chapus, this week’s Family Life Hometown Hero. The founder says Miss Julie’s School of Beauty is an outreach of Christ for Kids Ministries of Rush, New York.

​When a trafficking victim has spent time on the street, they will likely be arrested for the very situation they have been forced into. Even if escape becomes possible, afterward – left with a criminal record – they experience extreme difficulty finding a job that pays a living wage. ​The school helps one’s past not prevent a beautiful future. Acting on that conviction, we provide survivors and those at risk with an opportunity to earn a cosmetology license and enter into a rewarding career, at no cost to them. Because an state-granted cosmetology license removes the necessity of a background check, graduates are free to pursue an independent living without the necessity of explaining a traumatic history.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:31 — 7.6MB)

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Hometown Heroes this week features Jeff Winton, founder and head of Rural Minds, a Chautauqua County, NY-based organization dedicated to advocating for improved mental health services for rural America.

Winton was motivated by a tragedy in his own family to start Rural Minds, which urges action because mental illness is a growing epidemic, and the suicide rate is 65% higher in rural areas. Covid lockdowns and lack of good broadband internet service adds to feelings of isolation. There is hope and practical ways to encourage each other.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:19 — 12.2MB)

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This week’s local hero is Andrea Witmer with Mercy Run Ministry in Mifflinburg, PA. Her efforts focus on aiding prisoners and victims enslaved in the adult sex industry.