St. John’s Ministries announces new mission and vision, reaffirming commitment to addressing homelessness

GREEN BAY – St. John’s Ministries has announced a new mission and vision statement, reaffirming its commitment to serving adults experiencing homelessness and housing instability through low-barrier shelter, essential resources and compassionate support.

The new mission reads “Grounded by faith, we strengthen the greater Green Bay community by providing essential resources, low-barrier shelter and compassionate support to adults experiencing homelessness and housing instability” while the new vision reads “We envision a community that affirms each person’s dignity, offers safety and stability, and provides a path toward lasting change, where adult homelessness is rare, brief and non-recurring.”

Approved by the organization’s Board of Directors, the statements reflect more than two decades of growth and an increasingly intentional approach to addressing the complex challenges that contribute to homelessness.

“We’ve had a mission and a vision for years… at the time it was to honor dignity, restore hope and create lasting change for people experiencing homelessness and housing instability in Green Bay,” said Jesse Brunette, executive director of St. John’s Ministries. “It’s served us well, but it has to be a little more focused on some of the specific challenges.”

Recently, Brunette says the main challenges contributing to homelessness and housing insecurity include high costs of housing, lack of available housing and barriers to accessing shelter, such as substance addiction, mental health and chronic health conditions.

“When a person has a co-occurrence of several different barriers to housing, the challenges get more intense and require additional services…” Brunette said. “Over 20 years ago when we started, we began simply because people were on the streets of Green Bay that did not qualify for other shelters. The other shelters do wonderful things, but it was certainly a gap in our area that if you were struggling with drug or alcohol addiction, you didn’t have the ability to be sheltered.”

In updating their mission and vision to more specifically address the challenges facing the community they serve, Brunette said St John’s recognizes that, “Shelter alone doesn’t solve the crises that people face” and reaffirms the organization’s commitment to providing a robust offering of services to set people up for success, whether it’s community outreach, meals, clothing, hygiene items, a mailing address or continued assistance after finding housing.

“We know locally that when a person is homeless and then housed, they will fall back into homelessness one out of three times,” Brunette said. “That’s a very high failure rate as a community. When our former guests get housed in the community, they’re still vulnerable to the challenges of life. We are going into their homes and providing intensive case management to ensure that their housing is maintained and that they don’t fall back into homelessness.”