Annual Reports

SECU Family House 2009 Annual Report to the Community

This represents our first Annual Report to The Community, a community that includes a considerable network of volunteers, funders, former guests, friends, family and associates of former guests—and extends to hospital administrators, nurse coordinators, social workers and others who represent the greater needs of UNC’s patients. 2009 was our first full year in operation, and we wanted to provide you with a summary of services provided and major gifts received—and give you a sense of the difference we are making for families in crisis.

Our role as a contributor to health care is unique. We provide extraordinary hospitality, support, encouragement, comfort, compassion, and tangible resources to our guests.

We remind ourselves regularly of the vulnerability of our guests. They remind us of the vitality of our mission and of the importance of our role as stewards of a special home that you helped to build.

We believe in housing, healing, and hope. The founders, the staff and volunteers recognize that housing without intentional hospitality is simply lodging—and that healing is made possible, at least in part, only with an orientation towards hope. Our volunteers, board of directors, and staff consciously create a culture of concern, respect, and compassion. I am grateful to them for the essential role they play. We are grateful to all of you for contributing in your own significant ways to maintaining this place of respite.

This House is a measure of how this community—through some of its most thoughtful visionaries —responds to the needs of North Carolinians and to those in its midst who otherwise would suffer, in greater numbers, alone.

Through your ongoing support, you continue to grant our guests a place to share their stories, console one another, to rest and relax in privacy, and to gain strength from the knowledge that they are not alone. On behalf of the entire staff and board, and of those we serve, thank you.

Greg Kirkpatrick

EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR