Tempo Kenosha November 2021 Luncheon

Our speaker this month is Sharon Pomaville, Executive Director of the Sharing Center.

When the recession was reaching its depth in 1982, Kathy Fors and Marilyn Chalet were chatting over a cup of coffee and discovered they were both helping out needy neighbors from their cupboards in the Wheatland Estates Mobile Home Park. “We were both exhausting our cupboards, and yet it seemed that the more we gave, the more people we found who were going hungry, “ said Kathy.

Said Rick Fors, Kathy’s husband, “I made a New Year’s resolution asking God to please open my eyes to people in need. A few days later, some neighbors came over and asked if we could feed their children. It got to be that we were feeding several families out of our cupboard. It was a strange coincidence.”

In 1983, born out of the desire to assist and serve the community, Marilyn Chalet and Rick & Kathy Fors turned a community center into a food pantry and a camper into emergency housing, and so the Sharing Center began.

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Even with Kathy’s untimely passing in 1996, the Center carried on, expanding services and programs for the communities in Western Kenosha County.  Over the years, it found a home in New Munster, Silver Lake, and Paddock Lake before its current location since 2012 in Trevor.

In 2014, Rick’s reconnection with the Center was heartfelt and humbling. During his first visit to its new location in Trevor, director Sharon Pomaville and Rick backfilled the last 30 years of history, dreams, accomplishments, joys, and challenges. When asked, “What do you think of the place?” Rick responded, “I couldn’t be more proud. It’s everything Kathy and I wanted to do ourselves. When Kathy and I married, the Sharing Center became our ‘baby’. It’s beautiful.”

Sharon said, “I longed to meet Rick and Kathy. Rick felt like a long-lost kindred spirit. We talked for hours the first time we met. The Center’s work today was exactly what their dream for it was 30 years earlier. It was a day I will never forget.”

Rick passed in 2016, and both Rick and Kathy’s children are still a part of the Center today. In the theme of Rick’s, “Show me the way” prayer, the Center continues to lead the way in Kenosha County to best serve to the community, and work toward ending homelessness and hunger both in Kenosha County and nationally.

The Sharing Center is celebrating 40 years! Find out more about them at www.thesharingcenter.net.