Salvation Army helping homeless, hungry year-round
Nov 27, 2012, 3:54 PM | Updated: 3:55 pm
Around the holidays, everyone thinks about doing something charitable, but there are needs for people year-round.
According to Col. Olin Hogan from the Salvation Army, there is a huge growth in homeless families.
“The Salvation Army is very concerned about hunger and homelessness,” Hogan told News/Talk 92.3 KTAR’s Bruce St. James. “One of the issues for us, for instance, is nearly 900,000 people have hunger issues.”
The Phoenix Salvation Army serves over 350,000 individuals during the year.
“For many years, we’ve been very concerned about people who don’t have a place to live and they don’t have enough food.”
The Salvation Army started Project Hope, which sends volunteers and employees to meet with homeless people to help them find homes and work.
“We are going to do the best we can to help find those people and get them back into normalized living,” said Hogan.
Hogan said people have misconceptions about there being fewer homeless individuals.
“The people we talk to don’t see that,” he said.
People can donate time, money or they can volunteer for services at the Salvation Army if they want to help.
This Christmas season, the Salvation Army will give 50,000 toys to children around the Valley. The organization also plans to make sure over 1,100 people are served through its adopt-a-family program and that 17,000 people are fed a holiday meal.
“We really believe that service is its own reward,” Hogan said.
