(upbeat music) - We're now joined by Sarah Steward, Chief Executive Officer of HomeFront, a not-for-profit organization making a difference.

Good to see you, Sarah.

- Thank you, it's great to be here.

- We have the website up.

Describe the organization and who you serve.

- Sure, so, HomeFront, we're actually celebrating our 35th anniversary here in Central New Jersey.

We're based in Lawrenceville, in and around Mercer County and Trenton, New Jersey, serving families that are experiencing homelessness and poverty in our community.

So, we actually have about 35 different programs, but our real focus is on ending homelessness in our community and supporting families that are living through homeless and living beyond homelessness towards a life of self-sufficiency for themselves and their children.

- Sarah, you told our producers that ending homelessness, is a direct quote, ending homelessness is actually very doable.

You're smiling because you really believe that.

- I- - Explain that.

Explain that.

- I do, you know.

I get to talk about HomeFront's work and homelessness in our community, in our state a lot, and one of the things I often encounter is this sense that it's something like ending hunger or world peace, right?

One of these things you always strive for but never can actually achieve.

And ending homelessness is actually very tangible.

First of all, homelessness is solved by one thing, having a home, and so we can get our hands around the number of families in our community that don't have a safe place to stay tonight and find solutions for those families.

The challenge we're experiencing right now in our state is that families are falling into homelessness as quickly as we're able to get them back on the road to self-sufficiency.

So, to really end homelessness, we have to make sure it never happens in the first place, and that's a lot of HomeFront's focus right now of how do we work further upstream?

How do we support families before the crisis?

We do a great job in responding to crisis.

I'm proud of that work.

We run emergency shelter and emergency response work, but as a community, we can reach out to families that are on the edge, that are facing that crisis.

And while the numbers are overwhelming, if you count it by county, it's a few 100 families each night, for instance, that are experiencing homelessness.

That's a lot, but that's not an insurmountable number.

And we've come close in the past.

The pandemic really set us back in a lot of different ways, but I want folks to know and understand that if we marshal the resources and we take this collective caring that our community has and put it in action, this is a problem that we actually can solve in our time.

- If people go on the website right now, how can they be helpful?

- So many ways.

I mean, we rely on the caring of our community and whether that's caring with your hands, right?

Folks that wanna volunteer and help in our food pantries or in our shelters.

Folks that wanna volunteer their expertise in whatever their expertise may be.

Folks that can donate their resources or their goods, right?

We accept clothing and furniture, right?

All of these ways to get the things that our community has to the folks that need it the most.

- Five key areas that HomeFront's involved in, housing, as Sarah talked about, emergency shelter, job training and adult education, health and wellness, and here's the other one that is the focus of ours, childcare.

The website will come up for our series "Start Strong" or the series we're doing," Start strong NJ."

in cooperation with the Start Strong NJ organization.

HomeFront's commitment to childcare, affordable, accessible, quality childcare.

Please talk about it, Sarah.

- Absolutely, yeah.

It's foundational to everything else.

And you know this, having talked with so many leaders on this work in our state, but having access to high-quality childcare can actually offset the negative impacts of poverty and homelessness for young people that are experiencing it.

It's one of the things that people misunderstand about homelessness.

When we think about homelessness, we often think of single adults, you know, living unsheltered, and that's real, and we need real solutions for that.

But the age in this country that you're most likely to live in a emergency shelter is infancy, before the age of one.

And so, we don't always immediately think of families with children experiencing homelessness, and then how do they access the childcare system?

For those of us with privilege and resources, it can be hard to access childcare system, and so you're a family living in a shelter or, you know, moving from house to house, how do you regularly access high-quality childcare?

So, at our HomeFront Family Campus in Ewing, we actually have licensed childcare built right into the shelter building so families can access it.

It's important for the kids, obviously, but it's also important for the parents, right?

We're working with mom and dad to help them get stable, find that job, find that apartment, get that degree.

How can any of us do that without childcare in our lives?

And so, it's a really critical piece, and like I said, it can also offset the negative impacts of homelessness and poverty for those young people, giving them a shot at achieving their real potential.

- Sarah, I'm a student of leadership, always been fascinated by it.

But particularly, I grew up in not-for-profit leadership with my dad starting and leading a not-for-profit.

My sister's very involved in not-for-profit leadership as well.

For you, how did you find your way to HomeFront as a leader?

- Yeah, so my background was in government and politics.

We actually met many ago because I've worked for Congressman Rush Holt for a dozen years, who was a really special person- - Hold on one second.

- For me.

- Hold on.

Rush Holt, 12th Congressional District, one of the smartest, forget about just politicians, one of the smartest human beings I've ever met and had the pleasure to know, but I just wanna share that.

Go ahead.

- Me too, yeah.

Me too.

(laughs) So, I had the honor of working for Rush for many years, and I always say, I didn't leave that job, that job left me because Rush retired from Congress.

And I was looking for something.

You know, Rush set the bar high for me in terms of what I expect from a leader and from a community leader, and so I was looking for something that was that same set of skills and network in service of my community, right?

I live three miles from here, right?

This is my home.

And so, I actually find leadership and government leadership and non-profit to be very similar, right?

It's the ways the community comes together to support.

And sometimes it's appropriate that that be government and sometimes it's appropriate that that be community institutions, but I don't see a big difference there, and so it felt very natural to me to transition from the government space to the non-profit space because, again, it's all the ways that the community comes together to do important things.

- Sarah Steward, you are making a difference, you and your team at HomeFront.

You're Chief Executive Officer of HomeFront.

I wanna thank you so much for joining us, we appreciate it.

- Thank you, glad to be here.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato.

We thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

Funding has been provided by EJI, Excellence in Medicine Awards.

A New Jersey health foundation program.

The Adubado Center for Media Leadership.

NJM Insurance Group.

The North Ward Center.

PSEG Foundation.

The Russell Berrie Foundation.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

United Airlines.

And by Newark Board of Education.

Promotional support provided by CIANJ, and Commerce Magazine.

And by NJBIZ.

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