Editor's note: This is the first in a series of three articles about Mission Outreach and its impact in the community, their needs and their goals. Each article will be run with a success story from residents at the mission or at the Charitable Clinic of the mission.

When Mission Outreach extends a hand to someone in crisis, it's not a handout. It's a hand up, said Jamie Collins, mission executive director.

"We are trying to break the cycle of homelessness," she explained. "We are not just wanting to help them in a crisis."

"We want to help them find a way to manage their life"  "to no longer be in crisis."

The mission itself is facing a financial and physical plant crisis. But help may be on the way. An individual in the community, who wants to remain anonymous, has offered a matching grant for up to $30,000 for funds raised through Dec. 20.

Cathy Hall Hughes, Mission Outreach's Director of Development, said matching donations from the community do not include money pledged yearly by supporters.

  Collins said, "The stipulation for this match is that it has to be new gifts."

However, Hughes quickly added that yearly supporters are encouraged to give above their pledged amount in order to help reach the $60,000 goal.

There are two different kinds of supporters, Hughes said.

"Those who want to give because there is a need and they will help anybody who truly has a legitimate need, and those people who want to be generous but aren't sure what impact their generosity might have ... They want to know that they are going to change a life and not just allow for repeat customers," she said.

With the global economic crisis, the mission is seeing increasing numbers of people in dire need.

Hall said, "This is not an overnight issue that we are experiencing in our economy."

For low-income wage earners, "hard times" started months ago, she added.

Therefore, she explained, "We are doing more on less ... Economic crisis hits the poor the hardest ... The poor are already barely surviving. So when the economy wavers, they are the first to feel the impact."

The projected budget for 2008 will be $60,000 in the red without the matching grant intervention.

Mayor Mike Gaskill said the mission's outreach is one reason there is not more crime in the community.

"I'm a firm believer in the idea that desperate people will do desperate things," the mayor said. "And when people don’t have a place to live or food to eat, they are going to find a way to make those things happen ..."

The city does not have to contend with the homeless sleeping under the overpass or in the parks, Gaskill said.

Providing shelter and food and encouragement to people "who, through, no fault of their own, have had bad things happen to them," the mayor said, contributes to a lack of crime.

He said, "It gives them a leg up and an opportunity to get back on their feet before they have get back out on their own again."

The compassion of those at the mission is evidenced by the work they do in community, the mayor said, for those “who have had hard times.”

The original purpose of the mission, established in 1982, was even then to be a place where resources would be pooled together to alleviate duplication of services, Collins explained.

While the mission provides many services, Hall said the goal is to keep people from being "repeat customers, and that's what we really want to do."

The work being done at mission "stands like a shining star in this community and it is truly doing what we are called to do from a scriptural standpoint -  "feed the hungry, house the homeless and care for the sick,"" Hall explained.

Collins likens those in need of help to being sick.

"When you have something wrong with you, you seek aide from someone in the medical profession, and Mission Outreach is like that, just in a different way," she said. "If you require a residential stay, then you need intensive care and someone is going to need to be with you 24/7."

There, she said, immediate needs are met and "some intravenous things need to begin."

Part of those things include developing a regiment to life and learning to follow rules and regulations, she said.

"But the other part of that is that there needs to be someone who will really listen, because you have some things in you that are preventing God from flowing in what He needs to and until you can release and know that you are in a safe place, can you then begin to receive," Collins said.

The next step, she said, would be having someone guide the patient, "show you the steps to you being able to get your discharge papers."

She rhetorically asked, "What does that look like? And how do you get discharged in such a way that you don’t have to come back here?"

Collins explained, ideally, those discharge papers would be into a life of independence.

But, "sometimes when you are discharged you still need a little out-patient care before you are totally on your own."

The mission feeds an astounding number of people daily - many from off the streets.

Collins said when she asked if there are really that many people in Paragould without food to eat, she answers emphatically, "Yes!"

"It is your neighbor. It is the person you sitting next to in church," she said. "You just don't know it."

(The second part in the series will address the day-to-day operations of Mission Outreach)