Neighbors Together strives to treat every individual with the respect and dignity they get almost nowhere else.

The people who come to Neighbors Together for help are invisible to society at large. They are easily lumped together into the categories of “poor” or “welfare mother” or “drug addict,” which erases the reality of their unique lives as human beings. Many have fallen on sudden hard times: senior citizens who have worked their whole lives but now must scrape by on insufficient Social Security checks, women and men who have recently lost jobs (our neighbors are always the first casualties in any economic downturn), victims of domestic violence, children born into poor families.

But an equal number of our clients are people who are shunned by society and other social service programs: crack addicts, alcoholics, people with mental illness, ex-convicts, people who have rarely held jobs. Our neighbors face many obstacles to establishing a stable life. They all live with violence on a daily basis, whether it is the drug-related violence in our streets or domestic violence in their homes. Lack of education creates an enormous hurdle in navigating bureaucracies or in finding sustainable employment.

In the face of such devastation, the residents of our neighborhood are nothing if not tenacious. They are survivors, who make a way out of no way. What they need is encouragement, basic support, and connections to resources that are not available in the neighborhood.

Neighbors Together meets people in the midst of their struggles and offers a sustained partnership while they find their way out.