Save The Eli Home

Outgoing Anaheim council member Lorri Galloway has fought for the residents and taxpayers of Anaheim for the past eight years, and now it’s time residents of Orange County pitch in to help Galloway help the children of battered families and save the Eli Home from Closure.

The Register’s Frank Mickadeit has details in this column.  The Eli Home needs to raise about $200,000 by the end of the year or its going to have to close at a time when a number of families really need the services it offers.

From the column:

Eli Home is the only private nonprofit in the county that deals exclusively with abused preteens. They stay up to six months as they get protection and counseling, and the staff transitions them into permanent homes. It takes about $700,000 a year to run.

Its transitional nature, Galloway says, doesn’t jibe with many grant givers, who only want to provide for permanent living for abused kids. Plus the economy has been tough on all charities. Eli Home fundraising has dropped by about half since 2010.

“We fought so hard to make this shelter happen,” she says, her voice breaking. “This is traumatic for me, because I don’t know what to do.” That doesn’t sound like Galloway, who is always solving problems – usually someone else’s.

Here’s the message from the Group’s Facebook Page:

The Eli Home Shelter in Anaheim Hills is in crisis. Because of a tremendous drop in donations, our accountants and board of directors have told us that we must close the shelter home on January 1st, 2013, unless we can raise enough money to keep the doors open. The decrease in donations is attributed to the economic condition and also a funders’ focus on permanent housing rather than emergency or transitional shelters. The stark reality is that there is a lack of permanent housing for victims of child abuse and domestic violence, while emergency and transitional shelters often are the only options that remain available to them.

After a very high profile and contentious battle to open the home in 1993 and a long history of being a safe haven to abused children and their mothers, it would be a travesty to be forced to close the shelter home. The shelter has 7 bedrooms and is in full operation. There is no other shelter in Orange County that offers the specific programs and services that Eli offers. There are other shelters for battered women, however, the focus and criteria for entrance into The Eli Home is homeless abused children. Would you please help us in our campaign to raise $200,000 by December 31st, to “Save The Eli Home.” Please go to our website www.elihome.org/donate and make a donation online or send a check to “Save the Eli Home”, 1175 N. East Street, Anaheim, Calif. 92805.
I’d like to propose a novel idea for those candidates who just ran for office all over Orange County.  If you won or lost and you have a positive balance in your campaign accounts, write a check for 25 to 50 percent of the total to Eli Home.  That should make a real dent in the funds needed to keep the center open.
Helping children and women who take shelter from abusive pasts is not a liberal or conservative issue — it’s a human one.