TWENTY ONE REASONS

Why

The Bakersfield Rescue Mission

Is A Vital Asset to Our City & County

And Worthy of Your Strong Support

  1. The Mission is trustworthy and accountable.  All donations to the Mission are carefully accounted for, wisely spent, and closely audited.   The Mission gladly submits each year to a thorough, independent audit by the highly respected accounting & auditing firm of Barbich Longcrier Hooper & King.   The Mission's annual audit and monthly financial reports are closely monitored by the Mission's 12-member board of directors made up of highly respected local business and professional leaders.  The Mission's audits and financial statements are open to any donor, citizen, or member of the public.  The Mission is proud of its financial stewardship.  From toothpaste to toilet paper, from bread rolls to building projects, the Mission can account for every dollar donated and every dollar spent.


  2. The Mission is a true part of Bakersfield.  Of all the worthy causes in our city, the Bakersfield Rescue Mission is one of the special few that is truly Bakersfield.  Started in 1951, the Mission is entirely homegrown, almost totally home-supported, and completley owned and overseen by a local board of directors drawn from local business and professionals.  The Mission is Bakersfield's Mission.  All funds entrusted to the Mission are spent locally to deal with this area's most serious social problems.


  3. The Mission serves all of Kern County.  Kern County's smaller cities and towns do not have any facility that provides the range of support and services offered by the Mission.  People in need from all over Kern County come to the Mission to get back on their feet.


  4. The Mission has not asked for major funding in the past.   The Mission has a broad base of community support.  Thousands of local people give an average of $25 a month.  The Mission has always "made do" with this level of support, but often only barely.  This is the first time in its long history that the Mission is turning to potential major donors to ask for significant levels of financial partnership.  Why now?


  5. The Mission has undergone huge recent changes.  In the last seven years, the Mission has changed dramatically in the number of people it serves, in the ages of people coming for help, in the range of services offered, in the philosophy that motivates those services, and in the buildings and facilities where those services are provided.  The numbers are far greater, the ages far younger, the services far more comprehensive, and the buildings put to far greater use.  These changes have gone largely unnoticed by both the public and the media.  Even the Mission's strong supporters are often unaware of the many recent changes.  Why is that?


  6. The Mission is almost invisible.  The Mission is tucked away in a corner of our city at the East end of 21st Street, a half a block from famed Luigi's Restaurant.  Out of public sight, the Mission quietly serves the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of our city's most hurting people.  It has faithfully done so for decades with little publicity.  As a result, many people confuse the Mission with Bethany Homeless Center on East Truxtun.  Even those who strongly support the Mission often have only a vague idea of where is is and what it does.


  7. The Mission never closes and never turns newcomers away.   The Mission is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.   This includes every holiday, every weekend, and every vacation period.   The Mission never turns people away.  This 24/7 policy of openness requires three shifts a day of Mission staff to provide safety and services to our guests.   Our city and our churches can take special pride that the Mission is one of the few missions in the nation that does not shut down during the day and require its guests to leave the premises.  Such daily "shut down" policies make it far easier on budgets and staff, but such policies also force people to wander the streets, roam through alleyways, hang out in public parks, loiter in public libraries, and panhandle on public sidewalks and intersections.  By contrast, the Bakersfield Rescue Mission provides a positive environment and wholesome options throughout the day for men and women in crisis or transition to work toward personal renewal in a safe, uplifting environment.  No one needs to be a homeless vagrant on the streets of Bakersfield unless they choose to be.  If they come through our doors, they are not standing in front of your doors.


  8. The Mission serves three meals a day every day.   The Mission faithfully serves three meals a day, every day.  Seven years ago, the Mission served an average of 6,000 meals a month.  Today, it is more than 21,000 meals a month.  The Mission also provides daily meals to many people living outside the Mission who are forced to choose between buying food or paying their rent and utilities.  By providing free meals for these people, we enable them to pay thier rent, keep their utilities turned on, and live independently in their own home or apartment.  In addition, the Missions's meals are no longer served in traditional "food lines".  Instead, our guests are seated and served at tables in an attractive setting, much as they would be in a nice restaurant.  We believe that this is a powerful way to honor each person's dignity and value.


  9. The Mission accepts everyone and deals with every problem.   The only requirement to enter the Mission is to be a person in crisis who needs help.  This means, the Mission's staff never knows who will show up at its doors or what what problems they may be required to deal with.  Consequently, the Mission accepts and serves them all.  Most other social programs specialize in one specific area of need, such as education, drug addiction, alcoholism, domestic abuse, mental illness, gang violence, unemployment, divorce, or helping those just released from jails, prison, or hospitals who have nowhere to go and no one to help.  The Mission deals with all these issues.  No other local organization provides such a diverse range ogf services for such a diverse range of guests.


  10. The Mission will work with guests for as long as it takes for them to succeed.  As long as a guest at the Mission is willing to work to solve the problems that brought them to the Mission, the Mission's staff will help them in every way possible, without any time limit.  The Mission is not a " flophouse" or a "warehouse".  The Mission is a place of hard work toward personal renewal.  Every policy and procedure is designed to affirm the value, support the dignity, and strengthen the self-worth of each person who comes to our door.  The Mission is a safe place of refuge where hurting individuals of all ages can feel secure and find support as they deal with the issues that brought them here.


  11. The Mission has no religious requirements to receive its crisis services.  The outdated stereotype of a rescue mission is a place where aging alcoholics get a bowl of soup, a bar of soap, a hot shower, and a hard bed in exchange for sitting through a boring sermon --"soup, soap, and a sermon. "  Here in Bakersfield, that stereotype is totally false.  The Mission provides all of its crisis intervention services without any religious requirements.  The Mission never tries to manipulate a person's poverty or to exploit a person's crisis as a pretext to force our beliefs upon hurting individuals.   Every program of a spiriutal nature at the Mission is totally voluntary.   Any religious commitment is fully an act of a guest's own free will.   The Mission respects each person's conscience and honor's each person's preferences in this all-important dimension of life.


  12. Conversely, the Mission offers dynamic Christian Discipleship Programs.  For those who seek God's help in their lives, the Mission provides intensive, Bible-based discipleship programs that teach men and women how to be true followers of Jesus, how to be led by the Holy Spirit, and how to rely on God's power to overcome self-destructive behaviors.  The Mission's staff helps hurting people learn how to live abundant lives that are a benefit and a blessing to themselves and to their spouses, children, families, friends, neighbors, employers, and co-workers.   Many graduates of our discipleship programs are now the Mission's most effective staff members.  Many others have achieved leadership roles in churches and business throughout our community.


  13. The number of people coming to the Mission for help has exploded.   In the last seven years, the number of people the Mission serves each day has skyrocketed from an old average of 45 to 75 a day to today's average of 300 a day.   This huge increase has created an urgent need for major capital improvements, for acquisition of additional buildings and property, and for more operational funds.


  14. The Mission's grounds and physical facilities are being totally transformed.  The Mission once looked and felt like a minimum security prison.  It was a grim place of drab colors, peeling paint, junk littered lots, smelly garbage bins, rodents, and high chain-link fences topped by barbed wire.   Today, the Mission looks more like a college campus, with attractive picket fences, large grassy areas, hundreds of new trees, cheerful colors, and park-like recreation areas.   Our goal is to offer a safe, clean, welcoming environment that affirms the value of each person who comes to us for help.


  15. The Mission deals with Bakersfield's most difficult cases.   The Mission has voluntarily taken on the task of dealing with the most difficult and devalued segment of our local homeless population--namely, single males.   It also has a special program for female felons on probation.  These are individuals for whom it is most difficult to arouse public sympathy or support.   Yet these are the very people who often make the most dramatic life changes when given the right chance.  The Mission deserves support for tackling our city's toughest tasks.


  16. The Mission has kept pace with radical changes in the homneless population.  Years ago, the typical profile of a person coming to the Mission was an alcoholic male in his 50's or 60's with a bad liver and a short time to live.  Today, the average age of the person at the Mission is between 19 and 35.   These younger men and women have their whole lives ahead of them.   The Mission's focus today is to help these younger people overcome the consequences of their terrible choices, resolve the problems they struggle with in the present, and move toward a new future of productive, independent living.


  17. The Mission has outstanding educational programs.   The Mission has one of the highest success rates for GED graduations of any mission in the nation.  In recent years, roughly 140 people have earned their GED's.  Not one has failed.  If a person who comes to the Mission cannot read, we teach them.  If they can read, we move them toward their GED.   If they finish their GED, we encouage them to take college courses or earn vocational certificates.  Educational success is a powerful force for changing lives.  When our guests realize they can acquire new knowledge and learn new skills, they suddenly see a whole new future ahead.  Our educational programs have been the path from despair to hope, from chronic failure to permanent success for many.


  18. The Mission has a bold new program to reach inner-city children.   In 2006, the Mission reached more than 3,000 children.   "In-R-City Kidz" takes our programs directly into neighborhoods where children at risk live, play, and go to school.  Our "Sidewalk Sunday School " brings spiritual content into their lives.  We partner with their schools with our After-School Mentoring programs and our Character Counts program.  We send needy children back to school with new backpacks and school supplies.  We link children to neighborhood churches and churches to children and families all around them.  By reaching children at risk, we are breaking the cycle of chronic homelessness and generational hopelessness.


  19. The Mission is a special resource for local law enforcement.   The Mission's chaplains are on constant call for the Kern County Sheriff's Department, Probation Department, and Bakersfield Police Department.  Chaplain Angelo Frazier is a gentle giant of a man.  Chaplain Linda Pennington is a wise and insightful woman.  They are trusted by the men and women who get into trouble and by the officers who arrest them.  Many guests at the Mission say getting arrested and put into custody is the best thing that ever happened to them.   Police and probation officers, in turn, find great encouragement in seeing dramatic changes in the lives of the people the bring here.


  20. The Mission provides real solutions to our city's most pressing problems.  The true heartbeat of the Mission's work is based on God's love for all of us and our love for God and others.  Without apoplogy, the Mission is a true "faith-based" program of personal renewal for our guests and Christ-centered uplift for our city and county.  In this unique environment, countless men and women have gone from bondage to freedom, from addiction to liberation, and from begging for spare change to experiencing real change.


  21. The Mission is a vital asset for our entire city and county.   If there were no Bakersfield Rescue Mission, our local churches, social agencies, and government budgets would be severly impacted by both the magnitude and complexity of the human needs the Mission deals with so effectively and so economically.   The Mission's budget is far less and its staff size far lower than anyone would expect for a work that serves so many needs of so many people.  The Mission, in short, is one of our city's best bargains for coping with our city's greatest social problems.  In addition, the Mission holds itself fully accountable to the city it serves and the donors who make its work possible.



Bakersfield's Mission is one of the best-run programs of its kind anywhere in America.




IN SUMMARY, Bakersfield's Rescue Mission is this region's most effective way to extend help to hurting people.  The Mission is doing the work that all great religious traditions commend and command.  It provides services and solutions that our city and county urgently need.  We shelter the homeless, feed the hungry, care for the sick, help the poor, liberate the addicted, lift the discouraged, restore the broken, reach out to the prisoner, reconcile the alienated, stabilize the mentally ill, educate the drop-out, preach the Gospel, baptize believers, raise up leaders for the church, and selflessly serve those who have been beaten down by life's circumstances or crushed by the consequences of their own rebellion or misguided choices.

Finally,the Mission needs significant support.  The Mission has proven itself worthy of such support.  We seek help form those who have been richly blessed with the resources and the heart to partner with us in this local work that meets local needs.  Please consider partnering with us.


If you agree that the the Mission is needed here in Bakersfield and wish to support us you may start by clicking here to donate now or by clicking here to find out more about donating to the Bakersfield Rescue Mission.