ECM Annual Report 2024 by eriecitymission

A Beacon of Hope

Letter from the CEO

As we look back over the past year, I am reminded of three stories that sum up the passion and purpose of the Erie City Mission. These stories led us to create our new strategic plan, Meeting the Need.

Our first story takes place in a homeless encampment off 12th Street in Erie, next to the railroad tracks. A sad place of tents, piles of garbage, and makeshift dwellings. There are many such encampments in Erie. We started a pilot program this year to reach out to those living in these encampments, letting individuals know there is help. On one such outreach, our chaplain and his team encountered a woman sleeping in a lazy boy recliner under a tarp. It was cold and she needed help. When offered help, the “mayor” of this little community became aggressive—she was under his control, and he would not let her leave. Our team left and came back with several men from our New Life Program and literally rescued her. Today she is in a safe place getting help.

Next, a woman from our New Life Program approached me after chapel one day and asked for help. She had turned her life around, the hardness she came with was softened, she had hope. But she was struggling to get employment. Her background check would reveal some serious charges, plus she had not graduated from high school. What could the Mission do to help her?

And finally, this past November as the temperatures dropped the team decided to open an emergency warming center for those seeking refuge from the cold. This endeavor was run by volunteers, and my wife and I signed up. The first night the temperature was 13 degrees, it was 9 p.m. and 28 individuals came through the doors. Nine were women. 9 p.m., 13 degrees, and nine women. An older woman who had not had a shower in weeks, a young woman who was seven months pregnant. Tragic— these women are someone’s mother, daughter, sister.

Our new strategic plan was unveiled in October at our annual Celebration of New Life and will have three objectives over the next three years. First, we will see more coordinated and aggressive outreaches to the many homeless encampments in Erie. Second, we will create a new learning center to help our residents with GED completion, literacy skills, job readiness, and job placement. Lastly, pursue a vision for a new 100-bed women’s facility, to expand our New Life Program for women and create a low-barrier shelter for unsheltered women.

Please keep those in need in Erie in your prayers, and also please pray for our strategic plan, that God would work in miraculous ways to help us do His work and move forward to help those who need us most.

Brian R. Johansson, Chief Executive Officer

Brian R. Johansson, CEO

Melissa’s Journey

After a life marked by trauma and addiction, Melissa found the Erie City Mission, and a way back to hope and healing.

Melissa remembers using alcohol early on as a way to ignore what she and her sibling lived through while at home. With an abusive father, who was battling his own addictions, Melissa found comfort in drinking to forget. By the age of 14 she was drinking regularly and began experimenting with drugs, eventually finding cocaine.

By her late twenties, Melissa’s addiction would end up costing her the stability and success she had managed to obtain up to that point in her life. “I would drink every day, after work. I thought I was doing good because I wasn’t drinking in the morning,” Melissa says. “I was a functioning alcoholic…until I wasn’t.”

Melissa found it harder and harder to hold her life together as her addiction grew stronger. After a 36-hour drinking binge that rendered her completely dehydrated, causing her muscles to freeze, she agreed to seek help at a short-term rehab facility.

“I finally surrendered,” she said, and she knew she couldn’t go back.

That’s when Melissa came to the Erie City Mission and gave herself over completely to the New Life Program at Grace House. During her time in the program, Melissa took classes on recovery, received counseling where she was able to work through the pain of her childhood, and began attending church. Not only was her life saved; it was transformed through the acceptance of Christ into her heart.

“I am still exploring it,” she explains. “I have a faith now that is so much bigger than me, so much bigger than this recovery. It’s amazing!”

Melissa now uses the tools and skills she learned to help others on their own recovery journeys—working for both the Grace House and Pyramid Healthcare. She has become an artist, a sponsor for other women, and a fierce advocate for the New Life Program after graduating in March of 2024.

“My new life is wonderful,” says Melissa. “I love helping other people; it’s a passion I didn’t know I had.”

Nick’s Journey

Nick had grown comfortable with his life of chaos before he found himself at the Erie City Mission. But even during his darkest days, those closest to him never stopped praying and hoping for his life to be transformed.

Nick’s addiction started, “when I was 14,” he says. And like so many others, it began with pharmaceutical pills. “I convinced myself that getting high made me a better person, made me more social,” Nick recalls. “But then I became so dependent on it I could no longer get out of bed without being high.”

It was at the age of 20, when Nick found heroin, that the real path of destruction in his life would begin. “There were no lines I wouldn’t cross to get my hands on it,” he says. Nick’s need to get high would find him in trouble with the law, and deceiving and stealing from those closest to him.

Knowing she would lose her son to his addiction, Nick’s mother pushed him to seek help at the Erie City Mission, where she volunteered.

When he entered the New Life Program, Nick was determined to leave after just 30 days. “I thought I was unique and didn’t need long-term help.” But finding himself surrounded by men that were experiencing real life change, Nick began to surrender to the fact that he did need help. “Clearly by making my own decisions, I was not going to be here on this planet much longer,” he remembers thinking. “I had made enough bad decisions to prove that theory to be almost correct.”

As he worked the program, Nick started to gain everything he was lacking. He established structure and discipline through program task assignments, learned recovery skills from staff who helped to guide and shape him, and heard Biblical teaching that would eventually reconnect him with God.

After graduating in 2018, Nick found work in a job he loves, married a Godly woman who helps to keep him accountable, and they have two beautiful daughters.

“If it weren’t for the Mission, I know for a fact I wouldn’t be here today,” Nick says. “They gave me the opportunity to succeed when I had no idea how to do it myself.”

Victoria’s Journey

For Victoria, Urban University was more than just an after school or summer program where her love for learning and her passion for horses and cooking collided. It was where her spark for life, that once burned so bright, was relit.

Victoria grew up in a strong Christian home. She attended church daily with her family and was an active member of her congregation. Considered a leader in her family, Victoria stood as a shining example for her younger siblings. But just like any other teenager, Victoria found that the pressures of this world can easily extinguish your light.

“They say don’t let your light burn out and don’t be lukewarm,” Victoria says. “I had a moment in my life when I did. I let myself do some stuff that I know I shouldn’t have been doing.”

It was a difficult time in her life, “when I would show up and do everything I was doing, but I wasn’t doing it for God, and I wasn’t doing it for myself,” she shares. That’s when Victoria got connected with Urban University and started asking herself what she wanted her life to become.

“Urban University definitely got that spark [for God] back up, and impacted my life in the best way possible,” says Victoria. “I wouldn’t be where I am right now.”

It was in the Urban University program and through their leadership classes that Victoria’s faith began to grow in confidence and maturity. She found herself pushing past her comfort zone and finding someone new to sit with each day at lunch. She even learned that to become a great leader you need to work as a team, encouraging others to step out of their own comfort zones.

Throughout her high school years, Victoria thrived at Urban University, making new friends, growing into a more outgoing person, and, most importantly, finding God’s purpose for her future.

Today, Victoria is a college graduate, a wife, and a Sunday school leader at her church.

“I am definitely blessed because of the Urban University [Program], because of those connections and the lessons I have been taught.”

Board of Directors

Rev. Malcolm Beall, Jr., Chairman, Associate Pastor, Federated Church

Jeff Evans, VP, USI Insurance Services

Honorable Marshall J. Piccinini

Albert Ganzer, Jr., Vice-Chairman, Retired, Business Owner

Kathy Griffith, Retired, Erie Insurance

Matthew Sahlmann Retired, VP, E.E. Austin & Sons

Greg Paulding, Treasurer CPA, Paulding & Associates

Alan Hamilton, VP, Wabtec Corporation

Dr. Benjamin D. Wilson, Senior Advisor, TPMA

Senior Leadership

Brian Johannson, Chief Executive Officer

Katie Beer, Director of HR & Grant Compliance

RoseMarie Croce, Director of Youth Ministries

Jason Geeting, Director of Men’s Ministries

Tim Jones, Controller

Jodie Krumpe, Director of Women’s Ministries

Natalie Washburn, Secretary, Owner/ Broker, Maleno Real Estate

Prof. Dr. Joseph Kuvshinikov, Gannon University

Brian R. Johansson Chief Executive Officer Erie City Mission

Erin Layden, Director of Development

Jael Norman-Lippert, Director of the Learning Center

Rob O’Connell, Chaplain/Street Outreach

Sandell Snyder, Director of Operations

Colby Tucker, Director of Social Enterprise

By the Numbers

1,096 neighbors regulary served throughout the year

147,518 meals served to men, women, and children

85,234 pounds of food distrubuted

850 turkeys with meal kits distributed at Thanksgiving

78 homeless encampment visits

27,528 nights of refuge

19,321 showers for men

575 men served in the Samaritan Care emergency shelter

140 youth impacted through Urban University

777 hours of programming and mentoring in Urban University

87 men and women served in the long-term New Life Program

20 graduates of the New Life Program

16,190 volunteer hours contributed

61,914 visits to our thrift stores

115 crisis requests filled

2024 Financials

*Fiscal year October 1, 2023 through September 30, 2024. These numbers are unaudited and do not yet include In-kind and Depreciation. We receive an annual independent financial audit at the end of every year.

**Includes Thrift Stores/Donation Center and other programs

Serve Erie Tour

The Erie City Mission’s 113 years of service to those experiencing hunger, homelessness, and hurt couldn’t happen without radical hospitality—like that of the Baptist Resource Network of Pennsylvania and South Jersey (BRN) who, in partnership with the Erie City Mission, served hundreds of our neighbors during the SERVE ERIE Tour and Harvest Celebration this September.

More than 200 BRN volunteers joined local Erie volunteers and Erie City Mission staff to SERVE ERIE by completing various projects within the Mission’s footprint, and many long-awaited projects right here on our campus.

Our men’s New Life Program transitional housing facilities received some much needed TLC including a coat of fresh interior paint, the mending of wallpaper, and the repair and sealing of some outside fencing. Another long-awaited project completed by BRN volunteers was the platform stage in the Mission’s Chapel.

But one of the most important projects, the cleanup of a deserted homeless encampment, was completed after months of outreach, prayer, and assistance for those who were living there. The Mission was able to secure housing for many of the residents of the encampment during the past year, and cleaning out this nowempty space was not just a needed community and safety concern, but a triumph for the Mission and the work God is doing in the homeless community of Erie.

We wrapped up this beautiful weekend of service with a Harvest Celebration! More than 250 volunteers, from BRN and the Mission, brought this event to life. We served more than 400 neighbors a free lunch, provided over 100 free haircuts, administered free flu shots, offered showers for men and women, held a kids’ carnival with photo booth, bounce house, games, and more, and handed out winter gear to anyone who needed it. It was all made possible by our amazing volunteers and the more than 25 community partners who set up booths to share their services with the community.

Meeting the Need Strategic Plan 2025-2028

For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future. - Jeremiah 29:11 NIV

Over the past eight months, our leadership team has worked diligently to craft a strategic vision for the Erie City Mission’s future. Guided by four principles—integrity to our mission, staying rooted in the gospel of Jesus Christ, addressing identifiable needs, and setting measurable objectives—we engaged with key stakeholders including the board, staff, program alumni, donors, and community leaders. The strategic plan for 2025-2028 was approved by the board in September and publicly presented at our Celebration of New Life event in October.

The Erie City Mission has identified three key objectives that focus on immediate needs within our programming and community. With God’s leading, our team will spend the next three years meeting the need.

We invite you to join us in praying for this strategic vision as we seek to restore hope and transform more lives for God’s Kingdom.

NEED: Education for our residents

• Nationally, 66% of people who read below a 4th grade level are more likely to encounter the criminal justice system.

• 73% of jobs require at least a high school diploma or GED.

• Many of the Mission’s program residents struggle with literacy, they lack a GED, and face ID/documentation issues and background check barriers that hinder employment.

ANSWER:

The creation of a comprehensive Learning Center on our campus that will offer:

• ID/Document services, tutoring, and GED testing

• Job readiness training and assessments and resume building

• Placement with preferred employers

Objective #2

NEED:

Coordinated outreach to homeless encampments

• Nationally, homelessness rose by 12% in 2023. In Erie County, the homelessness count in January 2024, was 434 individuals, with 76 unsheltered.

• Over 20 railroad encampments exist in the city of Erie, with over 75 inhabitants.

• In 2024 the Mission engaged with 65 railroad encampment inhabitants and rescued 11, showing the need for a larger coordinated effort in reaching this population.