Crescimento Limpo, Supportive Housing for Homeless

Hello friends! My name is Mark Kaiser and I lead the housing ministry of Crescimento Limpo, or Changing Lives as our organization is known in the US. I would like you to know more about our project known as the Cafela, a café that works to create opportunities for the men and women we house. The name Cafela is a mashup of two words - Cafe, which is bilingual and needs no explanation, and Capella, which means chapel. Cafela itself is just as much of a mashup- serving both as a Cafe and a chapel!

Cafela is a local favorite as a Cafe restaurant in our city of Itu, Brazil. We serve fantastic food that my wife Ali has curated and taught our kitchen staff to make, and we serve in a peaceful and beautiful outdoor setting. All proceeds support the Crescimento Limpo halfway house ministry and through it we have been able to employ many of our friends in recovery.

Cafela was built through the work practice training program of our recovery based ministry. As we were helping men and women to rebuild their lives in our halfway house we started a garden to increase our opportunities to work alongside our friends towards the rebuilding of their lives. Along the way we built a garden, a kitchen and eventually a dining space.

In this progression our friends saw that they could effect positive changes on the outside world, and many of them continued taking this process inward and have transformed their lives into an entirely new creation. When you have a minute, listen to the testimonies of Wayne and Jose as good examples of this transformation. This experience of transformation is why our organization carries the motto “Tudo Renova” or “All Things New”.

Cafela also serves as a local Chapel. Every Sunday morning we bring together a group of volunteers who join with us in our mission and a gathering of some of our city's most vulnerable population for a brief message of hope, an invitation to benefit from our housing services, and an abundant breakfast. We sit at the table, we hear stories, and we validate our guests as worthy companions. Many of our friends who are homeless tell us that it is this sense of mutual appreciation and respect that brings them back, much more than the actual breakfast. Many of our halfway house residents entered our program after being inspired to trust us through these breakfast conversations.

Today we are raising funds for the completion of a very necessary building project that is currently underway. Cafela has operated by use of an off site production kitchen that we will soon lose access to. We are also needing a classroom and group meeting space to support our friends in recovery and to teach new skills in areas such as finance, conflict management and nutrition. We are currently building to fulfill both of these needs on the Cafela property. Most of the two story structure is already built and we hope to complete the project by December, but we are still needing financial partnerships to help finish and furnish our new kitchen and educational space.

Please join us! This new space will be useful towards the recovery of many lives. Would you help CL towards its completion? I would be more than happy to discuss specific details with you. Thank you for joining us in this mission!

Sincerely,
Mark Kaiser