For the past nine years Sherry has been a para-professional for the
special education program at Benton Harbor Schools. She loves working
with special needs children and seeing the joy they get from each
accomplishment. She is also a resident of Emergency Shelter Services.
Her
budget has always been tight and, being paid only nine months of the
year, she would use her tax refund and a summer job to support her and
her son. Health problems of her own put her behind financially and,
just as she was getting back on her feet, her mother had a stroke and
required extensive care. She did what she had to do to care for her
mother until she died but it was financially devastating and she lost
her home.
“You do what you have to do for your family,” she
said. “Sometimes people fall down but you have to know that someone,
somewhere, is going to help you get back up.”
Emergency Shelter
Services, a United Way Partner Agency, was there to help her get back
up. Without the United Way funding you help to provide, this agency
would not be able to provide the kind of safe housing, budget
counseling and support Sherry needed.
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