A Message from Robert Brownbridge 
Past President, Fresh Start Board of Directors

Our executive director Susan Prather was deeply moved and forever changed in the mid 1970's when she met someone who was homeless.  He taught her how to help people at their own pace while building trust and community.  He was a part of her life until his death in 1991.  Indeed, that meeting changed Susan's life:  She befriended one person and has answered his unspoken call to action for nearly 30 years.  

Finally, at the invitation of the City of Walnut Creek, she founded Fresh Start. Fresh Start is beginning it's 5th year as an INDEPENDENT private non-profit (which takes no government funding whatsoever) and its 8th year of service.  Prather’s dream, her vision, was to create a "true community" for and with those among the working poor, homeless and poor persons. I have worked with Susan Prather now for approximately 4 and 1/2 years, and the following is how I have come to understand what a "true community" can be.  

TRUE COMMUNITY is more than a place where people gather or live. It is a place and a process where mutual trust, honesty, caring, respect, cooperation, sharing, openness, and taking responsibility make up its foundation. Then, and only then, can healing from the hard wounds of being homeless and being one of the working poor begin, and hope for a better life and world can evolve.

It is a place where you can cry when you need to cry. It is a place where you can rest when you need to rest or take a shower or wash your clothes or have a NUTRITIOUS breakfast and lunch. The community is there for its members in times of suffering and trouble. And as important, it is place to share a joke or a story and to share laughter and joy, to celebrate birthdays and successes with a special cake.  It is a time and a place where you can be yourself, because yourself is good enough.  You will not be laughed at or scorned. Because of all these things, members are better able to feel more fully human with compassion and concern for one another with more acceptance than judgment, with more optimism than pessimism, with more vitality than lethargy, and there can be more standing proudly on one’s own two feet rather than with bent head and shoulders in shaming one's self for one's failures. 

A true community has heart. It is a place of love in action where mutual trust and mutual caring are cornerstone values. It is a state of mind where optimism and hope are nurtured, where one individual is as equally seen and valued as another. Where responsibility is seen not as a burden but as an opportunity to support and give to others because one wants to. It is a place where one can serve another human being while being served. 

Don't misunderstand me. True community isn't all sweetness and light, and sugar and spice where everyone's nice all the time. There are conflicts, strong differences of opinion and problems and daily issues in need of resolve. The community's working principles of accountability and responsibility, mutual trust, respect and cooperation dictate that those in conflict work out their differences, complaints and disagreements until mutual understanding and common ground are found. There is an unwritten community rule of thumb that all members are mutually responsible to find workable resolutions when trouble and conflict rise, rather than hiding from or denying them. 

FRESH START IS SUCH A PLACE. It is a place where the common experiences of homelessness and being poor bring people together to care for one another, to be with one another; not to shame or blame one another.  Fresh Start is a place where one shares both the joys and sorrows of life; where there is no status or rank of one person above or below another, a place where the only competition is in the arena of caring: who can show and demonstrate more caring than the other, where everyone’s face is beautiful, where "being and looking different" is okay and not a reason to be rejected. True community, then, is a haven, a safe harbor, a port where one can be safe during the storms of life and stay without fear for one’s life and well-being.  

We thank you for your support, care and friendship.