ShaRu@AvalonGardens.org
520-403-6271

The Homeless Is Not My Choice Program

Many individuals and families are homeless not by choice, but as a result of unfortunate circumstances beyond their control. Clearly there exists a need to assist these homeless persons to get a fresh start in life.

The Homeless Is Not My Choice Program is tailored for those who are motivated to improve their life-circumstances but need professional assistance to do so. Our fully integrated and comprehensive approach endeavors to relaunch formerly homeless families and individuals to become fully functional human beings, enabling them to take ownership of their lives.

Our core residential program utilizes a four-dimensional approach, offering housing, organic nutrition, counseling, and vocational training.

Young girl with a small horse.
Young man playing guitar on stage.
Girl reading.

Each participant is assigned a full day of service activities and classes. By sharing their time and talents unselfishly, participants begin a path to a virtuous life, and in so doing gain a personal sense of goodness and self-worth. Other identifiable results include vocational grounding in agriculture and the building trades, and a discontinuance of drug, alcohol, and tobacco use.

The program is financially supported and staffed by the members of Global Community Communications Alliance, and does not discriminate on the basis of religion, gender, race, color, or national or ethnic origin in any of its admission or administrative policies.

We are delighted to collaborate with the following organizations as a part of the Local Coalition to End Homelessness.

  • Mariposa SOSA, Santa Cruz County Overcoming Substance Addiction
  • Crossroads Mission Shelter, Nogales, Arizona
  • City of Nogales Housing Authority
  • Catholic Community Services, Tucson
  • Veterans Affairs Supportive Housing program, Tucson

This program represents our best efforts to offer a viable life-line to individuals and families earnestly seeking to break their cycle of poverty and homelessness and begin anew.

Teenage boy working in a wood shop.
Youth participants working in green house.

For all the wonderful outcomes that have already resulted through our collective efforts, without your assistance, we will have to turn away many seeking our help. Your assistance will mean much more than your financial contribution. We will count you as a supporting partner in making a lasting positive change in the lives of those we serve and will allow us to continue with our plans to provide additional living space to accommodate additional participants.

Testimonials

"Before finding the Homeless Is Not My Choice program, I had spent over a year in a shelter. I viewed myself as a failure and felt that I had hit rock bottom emotionally, physically and spiritually. The program’s counselors met me with love from the day I arrived. They taught me how to live from a spiritual perspective and to see that homelessness was not my identity. They celebrated my strengths and helped me feel useful and valued while providing a healthy environment with amenities like prepared organic meals, housing, vocational training and spiritual classes to aid in my growth and healing."

~ Udana, Program Participant
Counselor Arlin with a young man
"To me the Homeless Is Not My Choice program is an opportunity for earnest homeless persons to make a fresh start in life while learning some important skills such as organic gardening, animal husbandry, carpentry, plumbing, home-making skills, etc. that give them more of a sense of self-worth and an ability to function more fully in life."

~ Arlin Munro, Program Counselor
Man with cowboy hat smiling.
Teenage girls hugging.
Young man reading a book.
Girl with a handful of red seeds sitting in a field.
Boy painting.
young woman spinning in a blue dress.
Children playing amidst the sunset.
Young man handling concrete.
Young man holding a baby calf.
A man doing a handstand
A young man working with straw.
People playing soccer.
Young man workng with a horse's shoe.
People harvesting melons.

Avalon Gardens

People working in crop fields.
Young man planting in the soil.

Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage is a 226-acre farm and ranch located in Rio Rico, Arizona, approximately 45 miles south of Tucson.

Avalon Gardens is home to the Homeless Is Not My Choice Program, and also serves the public as a model of agricultural stewardship and sustainability practices.

Young woman walking down a country road next to plants.
Girls high-fiving.

Preserving Cultural History and Serving the Southern Arizona Region:

The European history of the Santa Cruz Valley rightfully begins in 1691 with the arrival of Father Eusebio Francisco Kino, the Jesuit priest and explorer who distinguished himself as one of the only Spanish missionaries ever to foster harmonious relations between the native peoples and the white settlers. During his lifetime he established more than twenty missions among the O'odham peoples of the Pimería Alta between 1687 and 1711.

On the land that is now known as Avalon Organic Gardens and EcoVillage, Father Kino founded the Mission San Cayetano de Tumacácori in what was then a Native American village inhabited by the Sobaipuri, directly to the east and across the Santa Cruz River from what is now the Mission de Tumacácori Historic National Park.

We understand the Sobaipuri were an agrarian culture that relied on the waters of the nearby Santa Cruz and San Pedro Rivers to farm their crops of corn, beans and squash and were a linguistically-related branch of the modern day Tohono O'odham people.

View of fields at avalon organic gardens.
Harvestng Wheat at Avalon Organic Gardens

Homeless Is Not My Choice Program volunteer-staff members strive to carry the spirit of Father Kino's benevolent character in all of their relations and participants and volunteer-staff alike seek to honor the agricultural traditions of this land in their program activities.

To this end, we recently joined a coalition of other local farmers, millers and bakers to help revive two of the oldest grain varieties adapted to the arid Southwest: Chapalote Flint Corn and White Sonora Soft Bread Wheat, the original varieties of their species to be cultivated in the Arizona deserts as farmed crops. This work was supported through a collaborative grant provided by Western Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education, WSARE, a funding program of USDA.

Avalon Gardens is owned and managed by Global Community Communications Alliance, an IRS Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, EIN number 74-2553156 founded in Arizona on September 5, 1989.

Aerial shot of the PIRP campus - Avalon Organic Gardens

Letters of appreciation from those familiar with our work:

view the letters of support
  • USDA Logo
  • University of Arizona Logo
  • Rocky Mountain Seed Alliance Logo
  • Mexicayotl Academy Logo
  • Mariposa Community Health Center Logo

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