How community members can help the Ferry Street Resource Center

NILES, Mich. - It's been a little less than a week since the fire that dismantled the Ferry Street Resource Center.

"The loss of Ferry Street Resource Center is going to be felt far and wide and while my agency services Buchanan and Gilead, their agency serves a wider circle, the loss of this is going to be catastrophic to a lot of families that are in need," said Jan Nowak Walters, Executive Director of Redbud Ministries.

Novak Walters works in tandem with the Ferry Street Resource Center and ever since the fire, their organization has been feeling the loss of the center. 

"Because we partner with them when guests need financial services, it’s beyond the scope of what I can financially manage, I partner with other agencies, and I would refer them to Ferry Street," she said.

Although there is the loss of the resource center, Ric Pawloski, Executive Director of Ferry Street Resource Center, told ABC57 they are hopeful they will reopen soon. 

While there is not a physical location yet, they are still taking calls to assist people.

"We are in the process of looking for temporary space to operate out of, we continue to do our work, if you call the center, we can get through to Aquila or myself and we can still provide the assistance we were providing, it’s important though that we see you face to face," said Pawloski. 

They say being face to face with clients is extremely important to their mission.

They are also looking for resources, so if you have them, hold on to them for now and once they have a physical location, they will tell you where to bring them. 

"The problem at the moment is we don’t know where to have you bring that, so if you do that hang onto it, we’ll make sure everybody knows where we are going to be and then you can call and we can arrange for you to bring it to the center or wherever we are operating out of," Pawloski said.

One client of the resource center spoke to how much the center meant to her.  

"The Ferry Resource Center has helped so many people in Niles and it's really a shame that this has happened, but I think God has bigger plans right now that He's working with them, and they are going to have a lot of backup support, they help a lot of people in this community," said Amanda Arnold.

If you want to help out the Ferry Street Resource Center, click here to learn more.