2011 Citizens of the Year

His work in and out of the pulpit at True Deliverance Church of God near Bealeton may have been sufficient to earn Pastor Tyronne Champion Citizen of the Year honors. Her work at Victory Transitional Housing may have been enough to do the same for Felicia Champion.

Their work together at those two facilities and at Noah’s Ark, which provides clothing and household goods adjacent to the housing facility, at Clara’s Faith House, the food pantry on the same campus and which is open to all in the community, perhaps would have done the trick all by themselves, too.

Taken as a whole, the multifaceted body of work that they put forth under the collective banner of Community Touch makes the selection of Tyronne and Felicia Champion as 2011 Fauquier Times-Democrat Citizens of the Year as easy as any selection in the 36 years that this distinction has been bestowed.

In 1997, with only one member, Tyronne Champion started his crusade at the True Deliverance Church of God in Bealeton, originally founded by his father-in-law Albert Venson.

In the years since, the Champions have grown the ministry, but their vision didn’t stop there.

“This is a legacy my dad started,” Mrs. Champion said, referring to both the church and a drug-abuse outreach program that Venson founded on the same property. “We wanted to start building on his vision. Each generation should take the mission further.”

Under the umbrella organization, Community Touch Inc., the Champions founded Victory Transitional Housing, which provides housing and other resources to help homeless people get back on their feet; Noah’s Ark, which offers clothing, furniture and household goods to the needy; and Clara’s Faith House Food Pantry.

By helping to fill fundamental needs like food, clothing and shelter, while offering guidance and encouragement, the Champions work to help those affected by adversity fulfill their potential.

“You have to find a balance in life. It’s about reflecting on where we came from, where we are and where we're going,” Mrs. Champion said. “We share this world together. We all have something to contribute.”

The Champions opened Victory Transitional Housing in 2003, offering people who would otherwise be homeless a temporary place to live, in addition to other services to help them get on their feet. Families can live there for up to a year.

“We’re the bridge between the Fauquier Family Shelter, which houses people for a maximum of 30 days, and Vint Hill Transitional Housing, which houses people for up to two years,” Tyronne Champion said.

In addition to providing living quarters, the program works with a number of local groups and organizations to help residents obtain GEDs, apply for jobs, and learn how to manage their finances. Children also receive individual attention.

“She actually manages the transitional housing facility, in terms of the housekeeping items,” former Community Touch board member Brenda Pero said recently.

“The transitional housing facility is basically for people who are homeless. You must have a job and you must have a car in order to be there. There are about 10 rooms and several common areas, sort of like a dormitory,” she said.

“Families are designated to a room, then there are a couple of common kitchen areas. [Mrs. Champion] runs the facility. She runs a tight ship,” Pero said.

“They get counseling, financial mentorship and things like that,” current director Doug Boston explained. “The organization is designed to try and help them get back on their feet and get prepared to move out into a place that they can manage on their own.”

Household items to help them do that are collected in Noah’s Ark, and some of them go with departing Victory residents.

For his part as executive director of the umbrella organization, Tyronne Champion spends a great deal of his time working on grants and on fundraising projects to keep all the many aspects of community help alive.

Community Touch sponsors a golf tournament and a silent auction every year, and donated items are sold at Noah's Ark. But it is Tyronne Champion's grant-writing prowess that is so important, Boston said.

“Before he moved to this area, he and Mrs. Champion lived up in Alaska,” Boston said. “There was a time up there when he did fundraising, grant-writing for the American Red Cross, and he also worked on staff at a bank there. So he understands financial institutions and understands how a lot of this stuff works.

“Because of his background and expertise, he is the one who does the majority of the grant writing.

“He talks with people at the state level and works with people in various organizations around the state and within the community. He does a lot of networking, a lot of communicating with people to see what kind of funds are available, and he is always looking for connections with people and organizations that are looking for opportunities to help out with meeting the needs of other people.”

It has paid off. Boston estimates that the Champions bring in about $100,000 in grants every year.

More to the point, the money is used wisely.

Community Touch was recently chosen to oversee funds that had been allocated elsewhere, Boston said.

“Within the past two years, President Obama had some HPRP funds (Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing) which were designed to be managed by local organizations to meet the needs of people in a down economy,” Boston said.

“Community Touch was awarded those grants to manage and oversee Fauquier, Rappahannock, Page, Orange and Culpeper counties.

“The state was so impressed with the way Community Touch was managing those funds, and the utilization of those funds, that at the end of the program there were some other parts of the state where there were some funds had not been properly allocated or had not been totally allocated, and some of that money was redesignated to Community Touch.”

It wasn’t a lot of money, Boston said, maybe $8,000 or $10,000, “yet just the fact that the people who were overseeing the program, reading the reports, following up, were so impressed with the way Pastor Champion and his staff were managing those funds that they wanted to reapportion unused funds” to them and to other organizations that were doing an outstanding job of shepherding state resources.

For his part, board member Rev. Wes Shortridge would like to see Tyronne Champion more completely embrace his role as executive director, giving up a little bit of his role as “truck loader.”

“Something that impresses me and also frustrates me about Tyronne is that he is not above doing anything. He will load a truck, he’ll...he’s very hands-on.”

“The time that both of them have invested in people and in families has really had an impact and has allowed the Champions to continue to invest in the lives of people,” Boston said. “They are both very much involved in making that work.”

And tireless in doing so, Shortridge agreed. “Their hearts are in this community in a huge way.”