The Salvation Army with Jessyca Duerr

Our Speaker last week was Jessyca Duerr, who came to tell us about the Salvation Army. Jessyca has been an employee of the organization for 5 years, and is one of their volunteer coordinators. Her first comments were thanking us for our efforts at “ringing the bells” for the red kettles campaign last year. The cumulative effect of the kettle program is a Twin Cities donation total of slightly over $3,000,000 last Christmas season.

 

The Salvation Army was organized in London in 1865, and the first members came to Minnesota in 1885. The group is a church – a Christian denomination parallel to Methodists, Baptists, and Lutherans. She explained the army is organized along military lines, and that their officers are all ordained ministers. Although worldwide, they are very decentralized and all operational decisions are made locally. All of the money they raise locally stays here to support their social programs.

They have 6 program areas of social service. They are: (1) basic needs (food, meals), (2) housing, (3) youth services, (4) rehabilitation programs, (5) counseling, and (6) disaster relief. An amazing 83% of the money they raise is used to support these programs. They are a leader in the area of housing the homeless. In our state, there are 10,000 people who are known to be homeless, with over 40% of them less than 21 years old. In the TC  Metro Area, the Army houses ¼ of the 6700 homeless in shelters located all over the Twin City area.