Three FLCC alumni are part of a five-person team at a local agency that helps homeless and low-income families in Ontario County. Kate Bluett ’00, Melissa Farrell ’16, and Jasmine VanBuren ’22 offer empathy and expertise as employees of Family Promise of Ontario County, a nonprofit founded in 2018 and based at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Canandaigua. Family Promise is a national organization that started with a local effort in New Jersey to remedy and prevent homelessness. The Ontario County affiliate has eight apartments at full capacity. During families’ stay, the team gives the families support in financial literacy and connects them with other services to provide stability in their lives. For Kate, this is her second career. After earning her associate degree in human services, she studied nursing and worked in that field for 13 years. In 2013, she co-founded a community initiative called Nowhere to Go: Ontario County, a forum overseen by the Partnership for Ontario County that develops ways to care for men, women and children in crisis. “In 2017, I left my nursing career to focus 100 percent on social work,” she said. “I have worked with adoption and guardianship families, managed a crisis respite home, rode along with the Forensic Intervention Team in Rochester, supervised LGBTQ and domestic violence programs, and directed a residential substance use facility.” Kate started as director of case management for Family Promise of Ontario County in December 2022, though she also served as the agency’s interim executive director from April through July of this year. She remembers her sociology instructor, Joel Freedman, challenging her to start “thinking outside of my social norms and questioning my internal bias on a regular basis. Although at the time, we groaned at his lectures, later, I became grateful for the lessons learned,” she said. Melissa joined Family Promise in November 2022 as the marketing, events and transportation manager. She enrolled at FLCC to finish her degree as a way to increase her prospects in the job market. As an adult learner, she found getting her degree was not as hard as it might have seemed at first. The faculty, she said, “really just want to see that you're trying to comprehend, understand and communicate with the professors and you respect their time. And I think that was the biggest takeaway that I was holding myself back as an adult learner.” Melissa added that the critical thinking skills acquired through her classes have helped her tackle new tasks, such as grant-writing. Jasmine VanBuren joined Family Promise first as an intern in Wayne County as part of her human service degree requirements and then started working at the Ontario County affiliate. Her program taught her ways to connect with those in need. “It helped me to learn how to communicate with people. I’m still learning every day about how to approach things. It’s hard sometimes, when you work with people, you’re trying to build relationships. You don’t want to say the wrong thing,” she explained. Through those relationships, the Family Promise team can help individuals and families regain control over their lives. “It’s kind of like that starfish story,” Kate said, referring to the popular fable about helping one person at a time. – Laura Alishauskas Trio of alumni tackle homelessness in Ontario County Melissa Farrell ’16, Jasmine VanBuren ’22 and Kate Bluett ’00 work together at Family Promise of Ontario County, a nonprofit that serves homeless and low-income families. theLAKER | 31
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