Sixty-three faith congregations on Oahu took in 116 homeless parents and children from off the streets last year, feeding them and helping them get back on their feet until they found stable places to live.

Family Promise of Hawaii, a social service organization, has helped more than 1,000 people since opening centers in Kailua in 2006 and near Chinatown in 2007.

Working in partnership with churches, temples and synagogues, the effort to help homeless families is "truly interfaith, it’s really bringing the community together," Mary Saunders, executive director of the agency, said in an interview.

Claas Ehlers, director of affiliate services of the national Family Promise organization, met with volunteer coordinators and Hawaii legislators this week. He said in an interview that "Hawaii is one of the strongest affiliates we have nationally" and is doing "outstanding work."

The national organization has 192 affiliates around the country and is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, he said.

Family Promise’s partnership approach to homelessness solutions allows it "to accomplish so much with a fraction of the cost of a traditional shelter," with 160,000 volunteers from 6,000 congregations nationally, Ehlers said.

Saunders said in Hawaii, 26 churches, temples and synagogues take turns giving shelter to a dozen families for a week at a time. So volunteers don’t burn out, the families are moved to another host congregation after one week.

Thirty-seven other congregations are "support congregations" that don’t provide shelter, but supply meals, volunteers and donations, Saunders said.

Homeless families are referred to the program by other agencies, or the families sometimes contact Family Promise directly.

The congregations provide evening meals and a safe place to sleep, and transport them in the morning to the Kai­lua or Hono­lulu Family Promise centers, which act as the families’ home base for the day. There the parents can do their laundry, use the kitchen, search for jobs online, fill out applications and make and receive phone calls.

They can have mail sent to them at the centers, to let them receive paperwork for employment, benefits or housing, Saunders said. Children too young for school are given a place to play and lounge.

Saunders said despite the congregations’ involvement, Family Promise is not a faith-based organization and is adamant about not allowing volunteers to proselytize. Only if a guest asks questions about religion are volunteers allowed to share their faith, she said.

Ehlers said Family Promise’s "core program is appealing to every faith tradition. … Congregations will invariably say, ‘We get more out of this than the (homeless) families do,’ that ‘it is so enriching to us.’"

Saunders said a strong bond is formed when volunteers get to know their guests over seven days, and "we all share in the success of the families" when they find places to live, which usually happens within a few months, she said. Often the bonds last well beyond their transition from the program — one guest found a job through a volunteer, and a few families found places to rent from volunteers, Saunders added.

Ehlers said, "Volunteers are just an extended family who care about them and want to help. And you see kids improved markedly in schools because there’s a larger community of adults invested in them."

Family Promise brings home the abstract concept of "the homeless problem" to its volunteers in a tangible way and helps them understand "this is something I can do that can have an impact," Ehlers said.

"Then they start asking, ‘What more can we be doing? How can we prevent this in the first place?’ And that’s really the only way we can eliminate family homelessness — when people of faith get motivated to address the root causes," he said.