Stepping into Generosity 2023 Grantees

Child Evangelism Fellowship© is a Bible-centered organization whose purpose is to evangelize boys and girls with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ, disciple them in the Word of God and establish them in a Bible-believing church for Christian growth and living. Our main area of teaching is Good News Clubs. We serve children in preschool, elementary school, and middle school. We also have a large special events area along with working with student summer missionaries. We have been serving the Chattanooga area for over 5O years. In the last year, we have served 9,898 children in our area. Of that number, only 266 preschool children were reached due to lack of volunteers, as many of the volunteers in this area are aging or have passed away.

Our Request: We will use these funds to contract with a Chattanooga based company, Socially U, which will video/digitalize our teachers as they instruct CEF’s “Little Kids Can Know God,” a curriculum designed specifically for preschoolers. The company provides colorful sets that are kid friendly, and editing is done as you go. When the filming is complete the project is complete. In two days of filming, we plan to film three to four 6-week series to be able to distribute to many local daycares and pre-schools, giving each center 24 weeks of Biblical foundations to help these precious children grow.

Homes and Havens

Homes & Havens creates healing spaces for individuals in recovery. Since 2016, our small team of compassionate creatives spends our days designing and furnishing homes and spaces that promote healing, rest, and joy for women/children and organizations serving those in recovery. Using a unique trauma-informed approach to design, our team designs spaces that awaken weary hearts to the reality of healing. In 2022, Homes & Havens launched a new program called The Listening House, which takes our understanding of healing spaces to another level. We now design beautiful soul care retreats for exhausted nonprofit leaders and community servants in need of a little recovery time. Each retreat is thoughtfully curated to help bring rest, healing, and courage to keep going, as we re-engage with Jesus and His invitation to “abide in Me.”

Our request: This grant will allow us to design a 3-day creative soul care retreat for 10 female nonprofit leaders in the Chattanooga area. Our team will design a restful space and experience that will allow these leaders to receive the goodness and beauty of God, address compassion fatigue and burnout, and bless the work of their hands by offering them rest for their souls. The retreat will include overnight accommodations at a retreat venue within driving distance of Chattanooga, nourishing meals, creative activities, and nurturing soul care offered by qualified spiritual directors and counselors.

Hope Unlimited Ministry began in 1996 with the mission of reaching single parent families with the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ. We pray that they will receive salvation (John 3:16) and surrender their lives to Jesus Christ (Galatians 2:20). Many single parents find themselves on a life path that is the result of negative choices they have made. Once they find their way to Hope Unlimited, they are seeking to change their behavior and become productive adults in society. By sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ with them and encouraging each family to live a godly lifestyle, our ministry helps our clients change personally, as well as influence the next generation in their care. In our work, we find that most single mothers struggle to move forward because of shame and pain in their life. Through Christ-centered counseling coupled with life-skills training and setting goals and objectives, they are able to unfold their pain within the “God-shaped vacuum” of love and support that Hope Unlimited provides.

Our Request: We seek a one-time grant to provide needed transportation for single parent families. We plan to purchase a van to provide access to reliable transportation to single mothers in poverty who often deal with constant car repairs. Because the new location of Hope Unlimited Ministry, on Signal Mountain Road, is not on a city bus route, the van will help us provide transportation to and from the classes and programs we provide at our office.

Restore 6:34 began its programing in 2021 as a discipleship home offering Christ-centered shelter and life-skill training for formerly incarcerated women in the Chattanooga/North Georgia area. Our mission is to provide restoration to women coming out of the prison system by helping them apply the Word of God, as they begin to conquer their addictions and transform their lives.

Our request:  We intend to further the safety and health of all who participate and serve in the ministry of Restore 6:34. We will use these grants funds for two home-improvement projects: (a) to finish the house’s basement framing, add sheetrock for more classroom and living space, and improve our HVAC; (2) install a safety fence on one side of the house. There is a fifteen-foot fall hazard in the side yard due to the lack of fencing next to the concrete retaining wall beside a steep hill. The hill is near the basement door where lawn care supplies are stored. Since our residents provide yard maintenance and tend the garden, the much-needed fence will ensure their safety while they work outdoors.

WillowBend Farms

Our Request:

This grant will be used to increase the quality and sustainability of our vocational program where we serve residential, transitional and community clients. Through education, job skill training, and leadership development, this aspect of our program empowers human trafficking survivors to be involved and vital members of the community both now and after graduation. With the exponential expansion of the vocational program over the past two years, this opportunity provides the potential to increase workforce opportunities, upgrade equipment for product manufacturing, purchase up to date vocational curriculum, new computers, and GED supplies to establish program sustainability and lifelong impact for survivors.