Authored By Chloé Morrison

Area residents have an upcoming chance to help a local nonprofit reduce homelessness.

Family Promise of Greater Chattanooga is hosting its 4th annual Low Country Boil April 26, and organizers said it’s not a typical charity event.

“This event is not your normal rubber-chicken-in-a-dimly-lit-room fundraiser,” the organization’s Development and Marketing Director Cary Bayless said via email.

The evening in Miller Plaza will include live music from local musician Amber Fults, a Low Country Boil meal, including a shrimp-free option, from Chattanooga’s The Feed Co Table and Tavern., and drinks from local brewery Hutton & Smith.

“This event is a fun, Chattanooga-centered event that benefits the homeless families with children and veterans in need right here in Chattanooga,” Bayless also said.

Family Promise has served homeless families with children in Chattanooga for 20 years, and the organization aims to help the families become independent and self-sufficient, which takes an average of 50 days.

The organization has an 80-percent success-rate in graduating people from homeless to housed, employed, self-sufficient and connected with additional resources, Bayless said.

Organizers hope to raise $10,000 and all the proceeds from the upcoming event will help the organization provide services necessary to transition clients from homelessness to self-sufficiency.

The organization’s board President Patrick Bobo said community support is important because it will help more than 1,700 homeless children in Hamilton County.

“In order to have the type of community that we can be proud of, we must take care of the basic needs of our children,” he said. “The primary reason I joined the board of Family Promise is that we help hundreds of Hamilton County residents, over half of them children, achieve permanent housing each year.”