Aurora > About Us > Our History

Our History

• The Vision        

• Launching Services

• Reorganization for Better Services

• Expanding Awareness & Collaboration

• Further Funding

• Leadership & Staff

• Programming, Services & Collaboration Growth

• Staff Changes

• Moving Toward an End to Homelessness

• Aurora's 15th Anniversary Celebration

• Awards

• Destination: Home

• Name Change

• Extreme Makeover

• New Staff in 2005

• Destination: Home 1st Year Celebration

• 2006 Staff Additions & Changes

• 2007 Changes

The Vision

In January 1988 Church Women United, an ecumenical religious organization, was challenged by its national organization to develop a local program to help women and children in poverty. The group announced that a community forum would be held to discuss the issue of homelessness, gather and exchange information about low-income housing issues, ascertain the extent of homelessness and poverty in the local area, and gather a core group of agencies and individuals who work with the poor to address their findings.

In February, the first public meeting on homelessness in the city of Evansville brought unanimous consensus by those in attendance that there was indeed a significant homeless problem despite denials by the general population that the problem existed. It was determined that while homelessness was a problem, the so-called "street population" was relatively small and thus "invisible". An instrument was needed to determine the severity of the problem and a reputable organization was sought to conduct a survey.

By early spring, representatives of more than thirty local agencies were meeting regularly, including Catholic Charities, the Evansville Black Leadership Conference, YWCA, Veterans Administration, Teamsters Union, Mental Health Center, League of Women Voters, Council of Churches, office of the United States Congressman, City of Evansville staff, Private Industry Council, and a number of churches and other non-profit organizations. Before long, the largest bank holding company in southern Indiana contacted the emerging coalition to offer financial assistance contingent upon incorporation.

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Launching Services

By July two local organizations announced plans to create Evansville’s first family shelters and the informal coalition adopted the name of Evansville Coalition for the Homeless (ECHO). By November, after forming alliances with the local Mental Health Center’s homeless outreach team and launching a homeless survey, it was determined that more than two hundred persons per month were homeless in the city of Evansville (in 1988). That same month, ECHO elected its first board of directors and filed Articles of Incorporation with the Secretary of State.

When a local physician volunteered her time and services to provide medical treatment at no cost, contingent upon ECHO’s agreement to be the sponsoring agency, the group’s focus broadened. ECHO’s first fund-raiser, "Hoops for the Homeless" – a high school all-star basketball game – raised almost $5,000 and drew further attention to the plight of the homeless.

By the end of 1989, ECHO completed its year long survey of homeless persons, had been granted a 501(C)(3) tax-exempt status by the Internal Revenue Service and saw the opening of a third family homeless shelter, providing immediate relief to families in homeless situations. ECHO turned its attention to the even broader vision of transitional housing, realizing that the conditions which led to homelessness often involved other barriers requiring additional assistance to help successful transition from homelessness, to shelter, to self-sufficiency.

A local radio station approached ECHO about launching a homeless awareness drive to be known as "Street Relief". If ECHO provided the volunteers, the station would provide its air waves to address homeless awareness, educate the community at large, and solicit contributions to the cause. It was an enormous success. More than fifty thousand dollars was raised and distributed to shelter and service providers in southern Indiana and western Kentucky, and heightened homelessness awareness in the communities served. "Street Relief" became an annual community outreach and educational tool of ECHO, distributing 100% of the funds to service providers.

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Reorganization for Better Service

After counsel from the local Legal Services Organization and the National Economic Development and Law Center (NEDLC), ECHO created a separate non-profit subsidiary to administer the medical clinic. Six members of the ECHO Board of Directors were designated as the organizing directors of the new corporation, We Care Health Services, Inc., doing business as ECHO Health Center, later named ECHO Community Health Care.

Subsequent consultation with Legal Services and the NEDLC led to the decision to form a separate non-profit corporation to address housing needs of homeless persons. The parent organization, recognizing that homeless issues were vast and complex, recognized that housing comprised only one aspect of those issues. To free the Coalition to address the larger needs while assuring that housing also received proper attention, ECHO Housing Corporation was formed to concentrate its energies on addressing rehabilitation and construction of adequate housing as well as helping transitional occupants acquire the personal skills needed to successfully become self-sufficient.

By early 1991, three ECHO entities had been formally incorporated and functioning with separate boards, all addressing the needs of homeless and economically disadvantaged people. Having formed two subsidiary corporations, the parent ECHO re-examined its mission, reaffirming the need for an organization to operate as an educational advocate and catalyst for grass-roots development of low-income persons and the communities in which they lived. The parent organization also recognized a continued need for an agency that would generate collaborative initiatives involving multiple service providers, thereby forming cooperating alliances rather than competing agencies. Service delivery was left to the province of the medical and housing subsidiaries while ECHO began to advocate for community economic development of the low-income neighborhoods of Evansville.

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Expanding Awareness & Collaboration

In June 1991, ECHO released its first annual report and, by the close of the year, was featured in a one-hour televised documentary produced by the Daughters of Charity national health-care system entitled "the Cry of the Poor." Early in 1992, ECHO publicly announced a Board resolution to investigate means to create economic development initiatives to employ its now growing number of family tenants. In concert with Legal Services Organization, ECHO presented an economic development seminar featuring James Head from the NEDLC in southern California, and Dennis West from Eastside Community Investments, a community development corporation in Indianapolis. The seminar renewed local interest in community-based economic development and individual empowerment of low-income persons.

ECHO operated as an all-volunteer agency until February 1995 when it became clear that the demands of homelessness, community economic development, and the needs of the poor required more attention than even the most dedicated volunteers could provide. A Community Development Action Grant from the State Department of Commerce was matched by three area hospitals to help fund ECHO’s first staff person, a full-time Executive Director.

In response to the commitment of the local hospitals, the Director’s job description included providing administrative support to Partners in Caring. Partners in Caring was a broad coalition of more than fifty service providers and human service agencies, many of which were already members of the homeless Coalition. In the four years subsequent to his hiring, ECHO’s Executive Director provided administrative support to Partners in Caring in developing collaborative evaluation and planning and wrote the Antipoverty Strategy emerging from those efforts. ECHO is now helping to develop the collaborative ties within Partners in Caring to implement the Strategy. Administrative responsibility was passed to Jenny O’Connor, R.N. with the St. Mary’s Health Care System in February 1999.

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Further Funding

In 1996, ECHO was instrumental in securing the continued presence of the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), a national funding organization created by the Ford Foundation, which links private industries and financial institutions with low-income communities and not-for-profit community development corporations. With ECHO’s help to raise $100,000 of local support contributions, LISC agreed to provide a match of greater than 3:1 of leverage dollars through the Ball Foundation, The Lilly Foundation, and the Indiana Housing Finance Administration. This action assured that more than $412,000 would be available for housing, child-care and community economic development in Evansville annually through the end of 1999. LISC’s total commitment was to have exceeded 1.2 million dollars over three years. In LISC’s reorganization, however, the program was ended in 1998 and the local office was closed.

The spring of 1997 brought the opportunity to initiate a homeless collaboration to seek funding through the HUD’s Continuum of Care grant. A total of twelve projects received the approval of the local continuum committee drawn together for this effort and the top five projects were funded. As a result, the Homeless Outreach Team, which was given top priority by the community-wide Continuum Committee, was inaugurated by ECHO in the spring of 1998.

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Leadership & Staff

Patricia Loehr, MSW, LCSW, was hired as ECHO’s first Outreach Program Director in May 1998. Four outreach workers and an office manager completed the team, which began operating on July 1. After only several months as Outreach Director, Ms. Loehr accepted a new position at the University of Southern Indiana. The highly motivated team continued to provide case management and supportive services to homeless clients under the supervision of then Board Vice President Nikki Presley, MSW, LCSW. In July 1999, the organization hired Luzada Hayes, MSW, LCSW as the new Program Director. Her energy and leadership helped to create and expand new services to homeless and near-homeless persons in Evansville and Vanderburgh County. ECHO received community support to provide limited storage space to prevent persons who have lost housing from losing furniture and personal items while seeking new housing.

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Programming, Services & Collaboration Growth

In March 1998, ECHO inaugurated the fourth tri-annual Homeless Survey, but due to incomplete reporting and information gathering, that Survey was found to be lacking in reliable data. As a result, the Coalition made plans in 1999 to conduct the fifth survey of homelessness in Evansville, beginning January 2000. The Homeless Survey 2000, profiling the homeless population in Evansville, was released to the public at the ECHO annual meeting in April 2001. (Copies are available at the ECHO office.)

To further enhance collaborative relationships and support of front-line service providers ECHO initiated and facilitates Helping Each other Learn Peace, Patience & Priorities (HELP). HELP provides mutual support and problem-solving forums among local homeless care providers through monthly meetings.

A new program was instituted in 2000 to provide dental and eye-care vouchers. This was the first such opportunity for Evansville’s homeless population to access dental and eye-care on a broad basis. Providing access to dental and eye care through private local practitioners, the Coalition was awarded a one-year HUD grant in December 2000 which was renewed for an additional year.

In conjunction with the National Coalition for the Homeless, ECHO sponsored Evansville’s first public memorial service in 2000 to recognize individuals who have died while being homeless. The Trinity United Methodist Church opened its sanctuary to the community for the service which is held nationally on the Winter Solstice. The homeless community, as well as many persons from homeless serving agencies, participated in the commemoration.

In the spring of 2001, ECHO began its first formal homeless prevention endeavor when it secured a grant from the Organization for a New Evansville (ONE) to develop a tenant education program. The program has been presented to residents of public housing, local shelters, and transitional housing endeavors. More information is available on this and other ECHO programs at the home office.

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Staff Changes

In 2002, many changes came to ECHO. Tim Suenram resigned as the Executive Director after seven years with ECHO. Luzada Hayes, Outreach Team Program Director was promoted to Executive Director in July. The Outreach Program Director position was slightly reorganized and changed to Outreach Team Leader. David Parker, Outreach Coordinator was promoted to the Outreach Team Leader position in September. Sarah Wolf Shawhan was hired to replace David on the Team as an Outreach Coordinator in October.

Moving Toward an End to Homelessness

In July, the Board of Directors voted to move forward with the National Alliance to End Homelessness: A Plan not a Dream – How to end homelessness in Ten Years. They allocated 60-70% of the Executive Director’s time to facilitate the local planning efforts to end homelessness in Evansville over the next ten years. A Task Force composed of local community leaders was organized in October and continues to meet monthly. The goal was to develop a written plan specific to Evansville by October 2004.

15th Anniversary Celebration

ECHO celebrated its 15^th anniversary in June, 2003 with a luncheon to remember our past, celebrate our present, and plan for our future. Guest speaker was Dan Shepley, Executive Director of the Coalition for Homelessness Intervention & Prevention (CHIP) in Indianapolis. CHIP is the lead agency in the planning and implementation of Indianapolis "Blue Print to End Homelessness." Past board members, current ECHO supporters, and others involved in the planning process, were invited to the celebration held at Trinity United Methodist Church.

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On June 1, 2004 Aurora, along with 12 local agencies, adopted AWARDS (Hoosier Management Information System), a statewide data collection and processing program that will allow participating agencies to monitor individual programs. This program makes possible for staff to track service utilization more efficiently and determine any gaps in eligible services.

As the result of a two-year collaborative effort involving over 200 individuals., December, 2004 launched Destination: Home--a Ten-Year Journey to End Homelessness in Evansville and Vanderburgh County. Destination: Home establishes the parameters for ending homelessness in our community by addressing both the root causes and the effects of homelessness. Like many other communities across the nation, we have sought to identify core issues and develop strategies to address them.

As noted earlier, in 1988, ECHO was formed and quickly identified two issues that greatly impacted the homeless of our community - the lack of health care and the lack of affordable housing. This led to the formation of ECHO Community Health Care and ECHO Housing Corporation. But, over the last 15 years, confusion developed because of the existence of three different ECHOs. On December 1, 2005, ECHO took a step in our history by changing our name to "Aurora." This change marked a new dawn for us, for the clients we serve and for our community.

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June – October 2005 saw some wonderful improvements to the very tired looking building at 100 Lincoln Ave. Internal and external painting, landscaping, new railings on buildings and refurbishing of the fencing put a new face on Aurora, Inc..

Aurora continues to grow! 2005 welcomed in two staff members through AARP Senior Community Service Employment Program.  Leroy Herring keeps our building in tip top shape for several months.  Kay Ward continues to keep our books.  Each has been an excellent addition to our program.

December 8, 2005 marked the first year Celebration of Destination: Home. Mayor Weinzapfel and County Commissioner Tom Shelter, Jr. offered congratulations on the successes of the last year and encouragement to look forward to the opportunities that 2006 will present. Many commitments were made to the project including Vectren joining Destination: Home as a Corporate Sponsor with a commitment of $50,000 over the next 3 years.

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2006 Staff Additions & Changes

In February 2006, Aurora added Sr. Mary Ann Woodward to the staff as Community Liaison. This position serves as our liaison to the medical and faith-based communities and is funded through Mission and Ministry, Inc.

An Education Specialist was hired in March 2006.  Kat Isbell serves in this role to provide staff support to further the mission of Aurora by coordinating community awareness and educational activities about homelessness and Destination: Home.

Another Outreach Coordinator was added to the Homeless Outreach Team in May 2006.  Meghann Kulenkamp joined our staff.  She had previously served as an intern with us in the fall semester of 2005.

Keith Gehl, another AARP employee, has stepped into the Maintenance position as Leroy Herring transitions on to other endeavors.  Keith began with us in May 2006.

2007 Changes

As 2007 began, Sherrie Bias joined the Aurora staff in February to serve as the Director of Development & Operations.

Pat Tapp, an AARP employee, began serving in the Maintenance position, seeing that the building and property are kept in shape.

Later in the year, an Advisory Board was created to assist our Board of Directors in its work of guiding the organization and creating a sustainable funding base and brand awareness.

(more to come)

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