(Miami, FL) Rev. Vanessa Tinsley was just about ready to give up.
"I was a person who had always been self-sufficient in my life. There was a point in my life as a young mother when I suddenly found myself a single mom and I had no income when my husband suddenly up and deserted all of us."
Vanessa felt discouraged as she asked for help.
"My very first visit to a Christian food pantry was the impetus to start Bridge to Hope. I made a long trek. I had spent a couple of hours doing paperwork and waiting for an interview and then finally waiting for a decision as to whether or not I would be helped. It was emotionally just a really, really rough day...", Vanessa explains.
When she was finally approved to receive food, Vanessa was shocked at the offering.
"They gave me one cup of rice, one can of green beans and three chicken thighs."
Vanessa put on a brave face in front of her children but that night she went to bed hungry, defeated and hopeless.
"Honesty, as a devout Christian...I lost hope," Vanessa explains. "I was really thinking about suicide, and realizing that I had a family, I could not do that!"
When she woke up the next day, this strong single mom went into selfless action.
"I knew that if I was facing this, there were other people having the same experience and I really wanted to do something about that."
Vanessa began calling local churches, asking to leave a donation box in the back of their sanctuaries.
"When I finally did get food stamps, I discovered and did not know that you could not buy soap, shampoo, toilet paper, deodorant...all the things that I knew I was going to need to be able to get a job and get back on my feet."
In her spare time, Vanessa started selling beauty supplies and asking her fellow Avon ladies to bring toiletry items to their monthly meetings.
"All of the money I made, I would use it to buy extra deodorant and all of those things. Once a month when I went to pick my USDA commodities at the Naranja Medical Center, I would hand out deoderant to other recipients. People thought I was crazy."
Vanessa's personal struggle birthed Bridge To Hope, a nonprofit in Miami, providing families with the very things she and her family desperately needed so many years ago.
"A fresh, nutrition-focused food pantry is our signature program, but we also do SNAP education so people can come here and learn how to prepare meals; we have the school supplies...we have done well over 10,000 book bags at this point...we have clothing, we have a program called 'Make a House a Home' that I'm very very proud of. We provide sheets, blankets, dishes, pots and pans that we provide for people who are transitioning from homelessness or have had a life event where they've had a loss and don't have those very basic things.That was born out of giving people food and then finding out they were eating it off of the lids of butter tubs," Vanessa explains.
Bridge to Hope also helps Miami families move forward in life.
"Right now, we have a small computer lab that holds about 15 people and when we're done (building out a new one), we'll have seats for 40. We'll be giving away brand new laptops in 2025. That is so people will be able to upskill and be able to be able to go to work and find career type employment as opposed to just a minimum wage entry-level position."
Vanessa's heart is to make sure young people have a chance at a better future.
"We have an anti-prison pipeline where we help men who are currently incarcerated. They get to leave their incarceration with their guards, come here and learn life skills, social skills, get job training and will hopefully have some experiences that will hopefully allow them to not end up in that prison pipeline...and allow them to go into society and finish their education and have some success in life."
Bridge to Hope is also there when disaster strikes.
"We've been involved in hurricane response in Andrew in 1992 and we've done work in Houston, in Puerto Rico, in the Bahamas and all over the state of Florida to help people recover from disasters.That's what we're about. Pretty much anything you need to be well, to be healthy...we also do free health screenings and referrals and things of that nature."
At the heart of everything is Vanessa's constant faith in Jesus.
"I live by Matthew 25 and it says, 'what we do for the least of these, we do for Him.' And what we don't do for them, we're not doing for Him."
