BAGE A12, KEIZERTIMES, FEBRUARY 3, 2017
Tix on sale for Cherry IHN,
Blossom Theatre Fest
continued from Page A1
The Salem Theatre Network will be hosting the Cherry
Blossom Theatre Festival, a city-wide event in downtown Salem
March 17 through 19.
The festival will feature 20 performances, fi ve workshops, six
of Salem’s downtown theatre venues, exclusive wine and beer
tasting, and passports and prizes.
A one act competition will feature performers from Beaver-
ton Civic Theater, Gallery Theater and Pentacle Theater. Four
area theater companies, including Keizer Homegrown Theater,
have performances slated. Workshop topics include acing audi-
tions, tools for devised performances, directing actors, nailing
mass auditions and body awareness on the stage.
A River City Rock Academy performance will close out the
weekend.
Passes for the entire weekend are available to purchase at sa-
lemtheaternetwork.org. There are discount passes for students
with a special educational track, and there are VIP passes for
adults with wine and beer tastings.
SALEM
landlord and we need more of
those.”
IHN receives federal Hous-
ing and Urban Development
grants to help homeless families
get back on their feet. Execu-
tive Director TJ Putman said
the organization has a 96 per-
cent success rate in transition-
ing families to more stable liv-
ing environments.
Each week, an IHN church
opens up its doors to homeless
families who eat dinner, spend
the evening there and then
have breakfast before returning
to the IHN day site in west Sa-
lem to prepare for school and
work. Keizer’s Salem Menno-
nite Church and Church of Je-
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sus Christ of Latter Day Saints
are supporting congregations,
but do not host. Families must
have children to be part of the
program.
As families progress through
IHN’s continuum of care, they
can eventually qualify for hous-
ing assistance that covers securi-
ty deposits and assists with rent
payment. The families them-
selves contribute a minimum
of $50 and as much as a third
of their income depending on
their resources. It costs about
$3,500 per family to make the
leap from homelessness to their
own living space.
While federal grants pay
for some of the most essential
aspects of the program, volun-
teers at each church supply the
backbone that makes it possible.
St. Edward has been host-
ing families for 17 years, and
three of the present-day volun-
teers, Corky and Letha Caron
and Mary Hancock, have been
there from the start.
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KEIZERTIMES/Eric A. Howald
Corky Caron fi xes a plate of food for an IHN visitor at St. Ed-
ward Catholic Church.
“One of the fi rst things we
did was an exercise where we
had $800 and we had to fi gure
out how we would budget and
live our lives. It really got us
thinking,” Letha said.
The program was quite a bit
different then, families in need
didn’t yet have all the services
the program now offers, but
much of it hasn’t changed.
Before families arrive, Corky
and Letha help move the beds
and furniture from the previous
church to St. Edward and then
set up living spaces for the fam-
ilies in four classrooms where
the families will stay.
“That’s one of the things
that’s different with St. Edward.
Each family has their own pri-
vate space. In other churches,
they are sometimes in one big
room with partitions,” Letha
said.
There are about 80 available
volunteer shifts for the week,
but Letha said the same people
sign up year after year to help
out with the effort. In an aver-
age year, St. Edward will host
three times for about 15 people
or four families. Last week, the
nearly 10 children at St. Edward
ranged in age from 8 months to
mid-teens.
Volunteers provide a variety
of assistance ranging from meal
preparation and clean-up to
ministry.
Corky does his best, after
serving up food, to visit with
families and lift spirits - often
encouraging them to eat more
at the same time. Meals them-
selves are given more thought
than one might expect, the re-
sult of a decree from Corky.
“The families end up eat-
ing a lot of pasta at the other
churches, and when we heard
that Corky decided there
would be no pasta at St. Ed-
ward,” Letha said.
Chicken parmesan was the
featured meal during the Keiz-
ertimes’ visit. Another volunteer
serves up Mexican-inspired
cuisine every Friday the church
hosts.
“We try to follow Jesus’s
path in helping people. That’s
my motivation,” said volunteer
Annie Chan.
That path can be fraught
with moments of joy and tears.
It might mean encouraging a
teary, anxiety-fraught visitor
out of their room to have a
meal. It might also mean bear-
ing witness to acts of kindness
no one would believe if they
hadn’t seen it themselves.
“One night, we had a family
that didn’t have a car and one of
our volunteers had an extra car
and they gave it to the family.
That was a tearful night,” Han-
cock said.
While the program is by-
and-large a success, forces out-
side IHN can have an impact
on what the program is able to
do.
Ryan Chytka, along with
his wife and three children,
have been moving from church
to church for two months. It’s
been tough to fi nd a stable
place that can accommodate
the family’s size.
“Rent’s just gone so crazy
and there’s been nothing in our
alloted amount,” said Chytka.
“We have back-up plans but
nothing set in stone. It’s still a
gummy worm.”
Chytka dropped out of high
school to take a job on a log-
ging crew when he was a teen-
ager.
“My fi rst check was $2,500
and I was 16 years old. I
thought, ‘Who needs school?’”
he said.
He and his family were liv-
ing in LaPine last year when he
was involved in a four-wheeler
accident that left him strug-
gling to perform simple tasks
like speaking.
“It scrambled the egg pretty
good,” he said.
Still, he and his wife were
on track to purchase their own
home until the deal fell through
and they were given 60 days no-
tice. With fi ve mouths to feed,
the family quickly spent down
their nest egg and other fam-
ily members encouraged them
move back over the mountains.
“We tried to get established
in McMinnville, but noth-
ing was happening and then
my wife’s mother heard about
this program, so we signed up,”
Chytka said.
He would love to fi nd work
that is still within his capabili-
ties, especially given that get-
ting approved for disability
might take years.
“I’m willing to do anything
so we can get on our feet,”
Chytka said. “It’s tested our will,
but my wife and I are trying to
stay strong for each other and
our kids.”
Chytka and his family can
apply for extensions to stay in
the IHN program, but he was
unsure what progress had been
made on their application.
Unfortunately, need is also
on the rise. Putman said IHN
has seen a 31 percent increase
in requests for services in the
past year and has had to turn
away 40 to 50 families each
month.
Despite those challenges,
Corky is a stalwart believer in
what IHN is capable of doing
for a family in a crisis.
“About seven or eight years
after we started, one of the
fi rst families we hosted saw
(Letha and I) coming out of
Fred Meyer. They came up and
thanked us and told us they
were completely self-suffi cient
now. I turned to Letha and said
if that’s the only family help
out of doing all this, it’s totally
worth it,” Corky said.
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