Camillus House has provided humanitarian services to persons who are poor and homeless since 1960. With faith-based origins, the non-profit was originally established with the singular focus of feeding Cuban exiles newly arrived in Miami. That simple service caused a ripple that became a wave of “compassion in action” – and that wave would become Camillus House. More than six decades later, they still feed the hungry. Every day, nearly 600 meals are served to grateful neighbors in need. But that’s just the beginning. Today, Camillus House is the most broad-based homeless services provider in Miami-Dade County. Beyond food and housing, the organization helps with clothing, job-training, counseling, medical assistance and many other services.
Their work includes life-changing programs that meet the varying needs of the struggling and homeless. Specialized outreach programs such as Lazarus Project and Matt Talbot engage and directly treat persons living on the street and are suffering with severe mental illness and addiction. Serving with hospitality, compassion and love, the non-profit helps the needy stabilize and access housing, victims of abuse and violence recover their lives, families facing eviction avoid homelessness, enables veterans to rejoin the society they fought to protect, and provides essentials such as clothes, showers, and food daily.
Carnival Foundation’s and Carnival Cruise Line’s support of Camillus House spans several decades with more than $4 million for its life-affirming mission to date. Thanks to these bountiful blessings, Camillus House continues to restore young lives through the Camillus Youth Housing Initiative and other vital programming.
Carnival’s $100,000 grant to the Camillus Youth Housing Initiative in 2019 was not only noteworthy for its generosity— it spearheaded an entire set of resources critical to nurturing youth into productive, self-sufficient lives. In so doing, it set into motion successful case studies for community cohesion that now stand to benefit from future funding as a result.
To learn more about Camillus House, please visit www.camillus.org.
