| Our History |
Lighthouse, Inc. was first launched in 1981 under the name Heaventrain. It is mobile outreach center that teaches character building, personal responsibilities, and family commitment to 1,300 youth and children each week.
Lighthouse, Inc. provides primary items such as food and clothing allowing us to impact hundreds of families units within our community. Our work began August 31, 1981 at the Willo-Lake Church of the Nazarene, in Eastlake, Ohio. The purpose of Heaventrain was to provide food, clothing, and spiritual help kids in the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority. C.M.H.A. is the oldest public housing system in the United States and two of its estates (Olde Cedar and Outhwaite are the original housing projects in the United States that were built in 1935) the locations served were Lakeview, Carver Park, and Outhwaite Homes. During this time our eyes were opened to the tremendous needs within our city. Within a year, we began to tap into the resources of seventy-one churches in the North Central Ohio District of the church of the Nazarene. In 1982 A 1967 Gertsenlager Bookmobile was purchased and renovated for Heaventrain’s use. From 1981-1988, the group of 71 churches provided a budget, which increased to $62,032 annually. This budget was used for operating Heaventrain and does not include the value of in-kind contributions of food, clothing, or time from volunteers. Our commitment to clothing and food distribution began to increase considerably. In 1995 a Bluebird T-2000 coach with a 15,000 Kilowatt generator, four roof top air conditioning units, eight color TV monitors with an audio visual system, and fiberglass school bus seats which accommodate 85 children, was purchased for Heaventrain’s use. Heaventrain announces its arrival with a brass train whistle you can hear up to five blocks away. Today Heaventrain goes into eight Cleveland inner-city neighborhoods. When the bus has driven through a complex twice it stops to begin its thirty-minute teaching. Hundreds of children run to the bus at each stop. Our volunteer staff of fifteen (7-9 rotate each week) hug, love, and play with the children, building a relationship of trust and respect.
Through story telling, videos, singing, puppet presentations, ventriloquist skits, and our life experiences, Lighthouse, Inc. strives to teach character building, personal responsibility, and family commitments to all ages, with an emphasis on children and youth. We recognize that these children and youth are the leaders of tomorrow, and with every investment of our time there will be a rebuilding impact. In addition to the impact we are making on the kids we serve, Lighthouse Inc. provides another unique outreach opportunity. Each year we host youth work teams from various backgrounds to see the realities of the world we live in. This visit to the “other side of the tracks” has made a lasting impact on many kids who would never get the chance to see poverty on this scale. We have had countless stories of young people who have decided to serve in their own town or change their career plans to be more of a humanitarian. In order to make this happen Lighthouse Inc relied on an estimate 21,000 volunteer hours in 2006.
In 1983, Lighthouse, Inc. has also developed a distribution network that is able to move large amounts of resources in an efficient manner.. In one day we can deliver 25,000 pounds of food. We target 10 primary distribution locations and 10 secondary locations. We pick the food up in the morning and move from stop to stop unloading at a designated community site. From here an army of volunteers from each neighborhood breaks down the boxes and set up a pantry, by the end of the day all the food is in the homes of the people that need it most. We have done our best to limit costs associated with a warehouse by getting the food to the need in the most efficient way possible. Food donations come from individuals, churches, companies, relief agencies, and individual farms. Over the years we have received food from the following places: Cleveland Food Bank, Dan Dees Potato Chips, Weir Family Farms, Millbrook Bread, Smucker’s, Keefe Supply, Apostolic World relief, and Campbell’s Soup. In-kind food donations increased to 24,451 cases of food each month for a total in kind value of $978,040.00 in 2006.
Since 1983, churches of all denominations have provided us with high quality clothing each year with a special focus on blankets, coats, and sweaters in the winter. It is impossible to calculate the hundreds of hours our volunteers spend who sort, clean, pack, and distribute the clothing for our Storehouse program.
In addition to our food and clothing distribution, we annually serve holiday dinners at forty-three different sites. In collaboration with the Progressive Action Council we are able to prepare and serve family style home made dinners for Thanksgiving and Christmas feeding 5,000 people.
We ran the Alfred E. Shultz community recreation Center in King Kennedy for several years and developed a team of indigenous leaders that provided youth programming services
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