‘Every day is a struggle’: Interfaith still helping after 25 years
by Carol Crump
When Joyce Bryan and Barbara Pringle met for lunch one day in 1984, the topic of discussion was the growing numbers of homeless families in Casper due to the latest bust in Wyoming’s economy.
By the end of the lunch, the friends had agreed to become co-directors of Interfaith, a new initiative started by Church Women United (CWU).
“Nobody wanted to tackle this,” Pringle said. “We went to lunch, looked at each other and said, ‘We can do it.’”
Pringle was chair of a CWU task force formed from social service agencies and representatives from 35 local churches. The group was looking for ways to address the homelessness that came along with an economic slump and 10 percent unemployment in the early 1980s.
Her longtime friend Bryan was doing an internship in social work at Catholic Social Services under Sister Margo. The Catholic nun was a board member of Interfaith of Wyoming, which was modeled after an Interfaith organization in Fort Collins, Colo., that the task force toured on the Salvation Army’s bus.
She suggested Bryan might be interested in what the organization was trying to do.
Once Pringle and Bryan decided to job-share a position that initially was funded with a $12,000 grant from the state Human Resources Commission, the biggest challenge was proving to the community that there was a need.
Souls Anchor, a mission that preceded the Central Wyoming Rescue Mission, was keeping enough homeless or about to be homeless people off the streets that the need wasn’t obvious.
“People didn’t want to know,” Pringle said. “The perception of who needs help was, ‘Are they worthy or are they dead beats?’”
During the first years, Bryan and Pringle spent a lot of “pulpit time” talking to local churches to gain support. Interfaith’s first office when the organization opened in 1984 was a small room behind the sanctuary of First Baptist Church at Fifth and Beech streets.
The waiting room was the church sanctuary, and sometimes 10 to 15 people would be waiting for an interview with Pringle, Bryan or one of the church women who volunteered.
“We just opened the doors and they came,” without any publicity other than word of mouth, Pringle said.
The young organization worked “extremely hard” to get connections and credibility with the Department of Family Services’ caseworkers and writing grants, Bryan said.
All of the churches were on board initially, and Interfaith still receives a significant portion of its funding from periodic donations from 32 of Casper’s 70 churches.
Interfaith also earned the support of the United Way and has foundation and individual donors to help meet its current $392,000 budget.
Bryan and Pringle retired in 1996 and remain close friends who see each other weekly.
“It just seemed like doors opened for us,” Pringle said. “When I look back on it, it’s amazing that what we needed was always there.”
Interfaith today
Interfaith Executive Director Linda Brown now runs a four-staff-member organization with a volunteer base of 14 and a 12-member board. Interfaith’s mission remains giving emergency assistance to those in need.
According to Brown, the new slump in Wyoming’s economy is making the need even greater.
“Everybody is getting hit hard,” she said, and the grant funding and church donations that make up most of Interfaith’s budget are down.
The agency’s bare bones budget includes the funding set aside for assistance, but it hasn’t included raises for the four staff members for the last three years.
Brown and the other three women who are Interfaith’s paid staff agreed to give up all of their benefits, including health insurance coverage and retirement, to put more money into helping those in need.
The agency also moved from the Life Steps campus to the Salvation Army Building at 441 S. Center to save $6,000 a year in rent.
The number of people who are coming to Interfaith for emergency assistance has doubled in the last year, something Brown blames on layoffs and higher prices for rent, utilities and food driven by the economy.
Interfaith provides emergency assistance as small as $10 for a Wyoming identification card or $25 for a birth certificate that is required to apply for any job or help from other social service agencies.
Those who receive assistance are followed by a caseworker and referred to other agencies if the need is longer-term.
Interfaith can help with emergency vouchers for basic needs like food, gas, laundry, prescriptions and thrift store clothing and rent paid directly to landlords.
The organization, which used to have its own transitional houses in collaboration with the Housing Authority, also helps families find housing with a list they maintain of 80 Casper landlords. They call Brown when there is a vacancy or she gets on the phone to canvass for vacancies.
Rent assistance is usually covered from Interfaith’s grants, but higher rents that have gone to $1,200 a month from the previous year’s $350 a month mean fewer people can be helped.
“A lot of people moved into Casper for work,” Brown said. “They don’t realize the high cost of apartments.”
In April, 218 people asked for rent assistance, a 57 percent increase from a year ago. Utility help requested in June topped $9,000. Interfaith now is splitting utility assistance with the Salvation Army to make the dollars go farther.
Prescription assistance, especially for the elderly on fixed incomes who know how to budget well unless there is an emergency, more than doubled from April to May.
Of the 163 new clients Interfaith saw last month, most are part of families of three to 12. The local agency also is getting calls from other counties for help.
So far, Brown has not had to cut back hours or close the doors, even though she said she wonders if she’ll be able to make the minimal payroll in the near future.
The success stories, like the mother who worked to buy her first new home, make Brown's work worthwhile. The woman came to Interfaith with her three daughters, homeless after the family was forced out of another town by a fiancée’s sexual assault and suicide.
“Every day is a struggle to get enough money to help these people,” Brown said. “We need help and we need people to understand what we do. If they could see some of the things we see, they would understand why we need the money we need.”
For information about Interfaith of Natrona County, call 235-8043 or visit www.interfaithnc.org.