Brewster Cares was born during the pandemic. Before Brewster Cares, there was another organization, the Brewster Emergency Shelter Program (BESP), that ran an overnight homeless shelter system during the winter months for many years. With COVID looming, the organization was forced shut down– and many people who counted on this service were left with nowhere to turn. Father Richard Gill, the pastor of Saint Lawrence parish in Brewster (and chairman of our board), found other like minded leaders in the community to create Brewster Cares as an organization to take on the reins of continuing to care for the homeless.

After adopting a similar overnight model to the previous organization, which includes relying on a rotation of local churches to provide sleeping space for the guests, Brewster Cares went on to open a warming center for our guests to find shelter during the daytime, which continues to act a place where the homeless members of our community can grab a meal, wash up, do laundry and generally have a safe space to reside while not at the shelter. 

Once we had the shelter and warming station in place, Brewster Cares began to look to other needs in our community. We started a program called “Supper Hugs” which connects with local restaurants to donate meals to families who may be in need of one. As this area is home to an immigrant community, we began to offer free of charge adult ESL classes, as well as tutoring to help students from households where English is not the primary language spoken to catch up on school work. We have since begun supporting the only Spanish speaking AA meeting in Putnam County at our warming center. We are perpetually looking at our community and asking: “What needs aren’t being met?” and creating our programming from there.