A public health story

By Vivian Rogers Decker, SPIN Café Founder

SPIN was founded with a singular mission: Serving People in Need. That's what we do, and it's still our driving mission.

Vivian provides a little sunshine and a lot of hope.

We provide basic services of food, dignity, and connection to the members of our community who have nothing, to people who aren’t even on the bottom rung of the social ladder. SPIN provides this vital service in response to a deep need among our neighbors. We see success stories among our guests every day. But still, people struggle to survive.

Take for example a citizen who struggles with mental illness, who has no private place to bathe, who ends up in a revolving door at the hospital, where a social worker tries and fails repeatedly to find respite care for the patient, so this same disabled neighbor of ours ends up back on the street. If there’s a public health concern involved, public shelter and other public facilities' spaces are not an option.

Like it or not, here in the richest nation on earth, even after centuries of public health crises and billions of dollars spent on research, there is no long-term solution to guarantee this citizen’s safety and health. At SPIN, we believe that when we know better, we do better – but after so much time and learning and effort to care for the most vulnerable, do we, as a community, really "know" better?

In spite of these challenges, we continue to improve lives little by little, one person at a time. With your ongoing support, SPIN will soon move into a bigger space with showers and laundry and more room for basic services. The needs of our neighbors won’t stop there, but this will be a great step forward.

Thank you for your kindness,

Vivian