GREATER STILLWATER CHAMBER OF COMMERCE Welcomes The Connect Center to the community

Cindy Parsons, Executive Director of The Connect Center, located  in Stillwater, Minnesota, cut the ribbon at the Chamber welcome celebration on September 23, 2021. Photo courtesy of Danie Powell of the Hive House Photography Studio. 

September 23, 2021, Stillwater, MN. The Greater Stillwater Chamber of Commerce welcomed local organization, The Connect Center, to the community with a ribbon cutting celebration on September 23, 2021. The event took place at 609 Fifth Street S, Stillwater, MN outside of St. Paul’s Lutheran Church. The Connect Center Executive Director Cindy Parsons, Board of Directors, staff, volunteers and friends, Greater Stillwater Chamber Members, Ambassadors and staff were there to join in the celebration. 

The Connect Center is the new “doing business as” name of The St. Croix Family Resource Center whose roots go back to 1997 with a mission to empower families and youth to reach goals toward financial stability through long-term relational support and connecting them to the community. 

Executive Director Cindy Parsons states “We help families with low incomes and youth with unstable housing set goals and meet goals. We help youth and families to have an expanded formal and informal positive and healthy support network .” They have found that the individuals they serve “have hearts that are hungry for a mentor to listen and help them.” The average age of youth with unstable housing that they serve is 21. The Connect Center helps youth and families with education, housing, budgeting and life skills, transportation, community connections, childcare, employment, and mental and/or physical health. 

The Connect Center partners with StreetWorks Outreach Collaborative to help further their efforts to connect with youth that are homeless or have unstable housing. StreetWorks is a collaborative of youth serving agencies in the metro and suburban communities that work together to help homeless youth in their journeys to stable housing. The Connect Center has a Supportive Housing Program for families and youth that includes having a mentor from the community walk alongside them.  With the celebration of their new name, The Connect Center is also celebrating a new Host Home Program for youth with unstable housing where eligible youth will be matched with community members to live in their homes for up to a year. Donations of household supplies, personal care items, seasonal youth clothing items (call for needs), gas and grocery cards are always appreciated. Call the Connect Center at 651-231-7807 for opportunities to mentor a family or youth, to become a host home family or for other volunteer roles.   

The Connect Center

609 5th Street S., Stillwater, MN 55082 

https://stcroixfrc.org/