The Ultimate Goal
John Middleton spoke at the March 5 Grand Opening of Project HOME’s newest residence, James Widener Ray Homes. John and his wife Leigh (who serves on Project HOME’s Board of Trustees) made a transformative leadership gift to Ray Homes through the Middleton Housing Partnership.
Certainly, the Raynier Institute and Foundation has, and their generous, lead gift to this building evinces their compassionate and visionary civic leadership. Homelessness is one of Mayor Nutter’s primary concerns, along with education, violence, and hunger. If Philadelphians are to truly embrace the city’s troubles as our own, and set about to solve them, and they are absolutely solvable, we should look to Ray Homes as an example of how to accomplish that.
This building has been renovated by a wonderful private-public partnership, including Project HOME, the Raynier Foundation, other private philanthropists, and the city, state, and federal governments. As with any great partnership, everyone played an important role, and we could not have succeeded without each partner’s contribution."The world’s troubles are your troubles, and there is nothing wrong with the world that better human beings cannot fix." With these memorable words, John Sloane Dickey, President of Dartmouth College, challenged his students to the better angels of their nature. All of us need to take President Dickey’s words to heart.
We’re proud to partner with Project HOME, because having seen the incredible record of success of this organization, Leigh and I truly believe that working together we can end homelessness in Philadelphia.
There are many issues Leigh and I care about, including hunger, education, and certainly homelessness. What we have come to appreciate about Project HOME is its integrated and comprehensive efforts – S. Mary and Joan have known from the beginning that just giving people shelter won’t end chronic homelessness. Project HOME offers supportive services, education, employment, and medical care to help ensure the success of someone who may have been on the streets for years. This is a results-oriented organization.
And as a businessman, I personally appreciate Project HOME’s collaborative efforts. Woven through everything they do is the knowledge that they cannot solve homelessness alone. Every day, they are leveraging the expertise, financial support, and volunteer power of each sector of our community. Anyone can tell you that that helps make Project HOME a sound investment.
Leigh and I wanted to expand Project HOME’s success by leveraging our own support – to build more partnerships in the effort to increase affordable housing in Philadelphia. In this time of shrinking budgets, it’s important for the private and public sector to work together and leverage resources to make the greatest possible impact for the most vulnerable citizens.
Our hope is to grow both financial and political support from the government, business community, and private sector exponentially in this endeavor that we believe is critical for the economic and social strength of our community.
We invite others to partner with Project HOME with the ultimate goal ending homelessness in Philadelphia.
