How We HELP
We help people better their own lives by providing hope and support for a better tomorrow and food security and homeless services to get through today.
Food Security
Downtown Food Pantry: Twice a month guests can shop for the food they choose (“client choice”). In summer, we distribute boxes of food geared to children (with no school breakfast or lunch).
Friday Night Community Meal :
Guests are served a sit-down dinner and can access programming: legal clinics health screenings, flu shots, nutrition information.
Homeless Outreach Program
Started by a homeless volunteer, he applied best practices of agencies he had once utilized himself. We work with the most marginalized: The newly and chronically homeless People with physical and mental disabilities Prisoners upon release Those suffering from addictions and in recovery.
HOPE & SUPPORT
Intensive Case Management:
We give people hope and help them build their own support system with intensive case management.
SOAR:
(SSI/SSDI Outreach and Access to Recovery) This highly intensive program offers a fast track to SSI/SSDI benefits for chronically homeless disabled individuals.
Better Lives RI
We help people better their own lives by providing hope and support for a better tomorrow and food security and homeless services to get through today.
Better Live RI, formerly PICA and the Providence In-town Churches Association, has been serving the needs of low-income and homeless people since 1974. We currently provide services to over over 9,000 people at our two locations through our Downtown Food Pantry, serving over 6200 (unduplicated) people each month. We are the largest provider of food security in the state through our two food pantries, feeding 50% of all people accessing food pantries in Providence and the only agency downtown offering intensive, holistic case management on a walk-in basis to the homeless population. Better Lives RI is a non-profit agency whose mission is to offer stability, justice, and hope to those in need through advocacy and direct service. This is accomplished through our five program areas.
Funding from Individuals
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Funding from Grants
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Funding from Other
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Please help support our mission with a donation
LATEST NEWS
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Mark Patinkin: The lives of those served by food pantries
PROVIDENCE JOURNAL December 15, 2019 I heard that 53,000 people are helped each month by the Rhode Island Community Food Bank, so I stopped by one of its pantries to find out who they are. Soon, Tina Santana, 29, walked in. She’s not what I expected. Read the article here: https://www.providencejournal.com/news/20191214/mark-patinkin-lives-of-those-served-by-food-pantries
PICA Gets a New Name and Brand
PICA began in 1974 as a joint project of several Providence churches and was named appropriately, at the time, “Providence Intown Churches Association.” Within the last few years the name was shortened to PICA. PICA recognized the organization has grown, developed, and changed over the years, the name “Providence Intown Churches Association” no longer represented[…]
Privatization of Kennedy Plaza, Scaring Away Panhandlers Won’t End Homelessness
The solution to this complex societal issue doesn’t lie with increasing police presence, outlawing panhandling and keeping the less fortunate out of Kennedy Plaza. In fact, laws and policies designed to criminalize and demean poverty and homelessness only perpetuate the real problem: a growing chasm between the rich and poor that is slowly ripping society[…]
Warwick Man Turns 5 Years of Homelessness into 9 Years of Feeding Others
Since its founding in 1974, Providence In-Town Churches Association has helped countless people struggling with hunger and homelessness, including one of their own employees, George Gaffett. At the time he was hired George had been homeless for five years—at one point even spending the winters on the sidewalk outside the Providence Civic Center with his[…]
United Way of Rhode Island Learning Circle
Eleven Executive Directors selected for United Way of Rhode Island Learning Circle. Go Local Prov News Article
Earn AmazonSmile Donations to Better Lives RI
Shop this “Holiday Season” at smile.amazon.com and Amazon will donate to Better Lives RI. Use this link and you will be directed to AmazonSmile shopping in support of Better Lives RI. Thank you for your participation in the AmazonSmile program.