Her Story
About Jennifer
I started my career as an accountant, but in 2014, I became a full-time minister dedicated to helping the homeless. I registered a nonprofit called Jesus Knows My Name and served on Skid Row for 10 years, where we established an outdoor church called Church Without Walls. After several years, I received a vision from God that inspired me to go beyond just feeding the homeless and providing necessities. I wanted to totally bring them out of their situation and help them become normal, productive citizens. That's why I registered Vision Possible in 2023 with the goal of building a holistic community. This community would provide housing and healing - mental, physical, and spiritual. We offer job training and hands-on work that leads to a paycheck, and during their entire time in the community, we teach them budgeting to prepare them for how to use the money they earn responsibly. They save a portion of their money in the bank, and when they feel strong enough, they can walk out with a job they're already working and withdraw their savings. Unfortunately, many people don't see this far - they think the homeless are useless and have no hope, but that's not true. Based on our relationship with our homeless friends, I know they have potential. The challenge is that when I approach cities or even the government to get support for buying land to build this community, they either say they don't have money or they don't want homeless in their city. I've visited several cities and found properties, but when I apply for permits, they reject us. I tell them this community will bring the homeless to become like you and me, productive citizens - we just need a chance. I don't need a good place, it can be on the mountainside or in the desert, I don't care. I just want them to be able to live peacefully where nobody looks down on them and they can start to feel their life has value. We've designed full life training to help them, but we keep getting rejected by cities and people. Even though we're not as successful as I'd hoped, I never give up. I keep going and trying to meet more people who will have compassion. Right now, because the people who come to our church have been with us for more than 10 years and have absorbed the Bible teaching, we've started registering them to go to school. We provide online classes, laptops, teach them how to use the laptop and register for class, and pay the tuition for them. This is going ahead of time before Vision Possible fully starts, but when it does start, the impact will be incredible. I've been working in the nonprofit industry for about 12 years.
Her Interview
Ten minutes with Jennifer
01What do you attribute your success to?
I see their growth, especially when I teach a lot of Bible or theology. I see their mentality, their action, and their habits have been changed. That's my big happiness and what makes me feel successful - to see them grow.
02What’s the best career advice you’ve ever received?
I would say, no matter what you do, you have to have compassion. No matter how high your education is, if you don't have compassion for your job related to what you learned, then it won't have excellent performance. You have to love what you do and then you have compassion, because any job must have a period of time that is a struggle when you develop at the beginning and you want to raise up and go further. All of those struggles will come to you.
03What advice would you give to young women entering your industry?
I would say, you have to know your calling. You cannot be someone else. You have to be yourself. The first thing is you have to know your calling. And based on that calling, you have to increase your knowledge, increase your working ethic. And then never give up. Never. Always be looking for advice, humbly get a higher education. And then listen to other people's advice, and discern those advice, and pick and choose the best.
04What are the biggest challenges or opportunities in your field right now?
The challenges are because I serve the homeless community. It's hard because now in society, especially today, everybody looks at personal possessions very tight, and they don't understand the homeless people's real problem. They don't have the confidence and they don't have the compassion to help out. Even though we're willing to do the work, we rarely get any support.
05What values are most important to you in your work and personal life?
I see that the homeless have growth in what we teach, and they have the desire, so we want to teach them even more. We encourage them and normally we teach them from, like, an elementary school level, and go further, go further, then go deeper to teach them. Even though they are homeless, we don't see them as homeless. We just see them like an elementary school student, or even kindergarten, and we gradually bring them to deeper understanding.
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