Community Corner

IHOP at Cornerstone Nets Benefits for ECHO, New Horizons

The IHOP Community Pancake Fundraiser at Cornerstone Baptist Church shows how businesses working with community groups can benefit residents in need. Nonprofit beneficiaries were ECHO and New Horizons Group Homes.

 

Joanna Verga was in charge of the signs, hoping to lure motorists off Parsons Avenue and into the parking lot and field of Cornerstone Baptist Church.

One sign said, “Pancake Breakfast.” A second sign let it be known that the pancakes were from the International House of Pancakes (IHOP).

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Benefitting from the second annual IHOP Community Pancake Breakfast on April 14 were two Brandon charities: the Emergency Care Help Organization (ECHO) and New Horizons Group Homes.

"We allow mentally challenged adults to live in a Christian-home setting and still be a part of the community," said Louise Fore, a nurse and assistant adminisrator at New Horizons. "They go to work and they're able to live by themselves."

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ECHO is a food bank and clothes closet, soon to launch as well a client center to better address the multiple needs of people living without the means to live adequately through emergency situations. New Horizons provides group-home living for men and women with special needs.

“I just think there is a huge lack of awareness about how difficult it is to get help for special needs adults,” Verga said. “School, it’s fine, but what do you do when your child turns 18? Where do you go for information, who do you trust? Once your past school age, what do you do?”

New Horizons runs two group home in Brandon; one for six women, the other for six men.

In today’s economy, nonprofits, like small businesses, struggle to make ends meet, which is why events such as the pancake breakfast fundraiser are so thankfully accepted.

“I think it’s major, it’s wonderful, it’s stupendous, because it’s helping two great organizations, ECHO and New Horizons,” said Pete Watkins, of New Horizons. “In this hard economy for nonprofits we’re going to have to step up to the plate and do fundraisers and get our face out in the community so that they know that we’re here.”

Stacey Efaw is the executive director of ECHO.

“We’re just so thankful for everybody’s support,” Efaw said. “I love it when people can come out and support two organizations at one time.”

Hard at work at the fundraiser was Bob Andrews, general manager of the IHOP restaurant on State Road 60 in Valrico, without which there would be no pancake breakfast.

“This is the second year for us,” Andrews said about the event. “It’s for a good cause and it helps the community.”


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