Today we’d like to introduce you to Eric Camarillo.
Hi Eric, thanks for joining us today. We’d love for you to start by introducing yourself.
My name is Eric Camarillo and I am the President/CEO of SALT Outreach. I am currently acting as the Executive Director for the organization. I started the organization back in 2011. Here is a little more about SALT Outreach and our history.
SALT Outreach’s unsheltered outreach started with two people feeding 15 people experiencing homelessness at the end of 2011. Over the course of the next four years, SALT Outreach’s food share with the unsheltered grew to hundreds of volunteers feeding two to three hundred people bi-weekly.
But SALT did not want to stop at just serving food, SALT volunteers and leaders started surveying the unsheltered community and found out the next need that was most practical for us to meet is clothing and hygiene products. So we fundraised for a clothing trailer that we called, “Change” that we launched in 2016. We continued to survey the unsheltered community and found out that over half of the people we serve were actively looking for work but also hadn’t showered in three to seven days.
Some actively looking for work had not showered in up to three months. So the next year and a half we fundraised for a shower trailer which we launched in the last quarter of 2018. With the launch of our shower trailer, we launched our mobile drop-in center offering five services to the unsheltered: showers, clothing, hygiene products, haircuts, and food.
We operated the rest of 2018 as an all-volunteer organization once per month, we operated in 2019 twice per month and entered 2020 operating three times per month. In an effort to operate once per week we decided to hire two part-time people. The COVID-19 hit in mid-March. We started a partnership with the city of Orlando during that time to move from three to four times per month to three days per week. At that time we went from serving about 150 people per month to about 150 people per week.
In 2021, SALT wanted to broaden and deepen its impact so in January we launched a case management program, in March we added an Outreach Chaplain, in April we added a laundry trailer with six washers and dryers, and in July we started to fundraise for permanent supportive housing units from shipping containers. Throughout the year we also added charging stations, mail services, and storage services.
SALT expanded from three days per week to five days a week ending the year serving approximately 150 to 200 people per day. Throughout the year SALT saw on average five to ten new people to their services per day. In 2021, SALT’s case management team helped three in four people take the next step toward ending their homelessness and helped one in five people transition to shelter or housing.
As the need grows SALT is entering 2022 looking forward to expanding these services in other cities that need them. With the help of their community partners, donors, volunteers, and staff they have been able to serve over 4,000 people with over 150,000 different services. SALT is working to expand and has started to operate once a week in Sanford and once a month in Tampa and Daytona.
SALT will be expanding its services to east and west Orange County within the next few months.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle-free, but so far would you say the journey has been a fairly smooth road?
It has not been a smooth road. There were maybe some smooth moments but especially since the start of the pandemic SALT has seen many challenges along the way.
In 2020, in order to meet the need, SALT had to quadruple its fundraising compared to the previous year. SALT also had to build an infrastructure that could meet the growing need of the people they were serving. With faith, persistence, and an amazing team of passionate and dedicated people SALT was able to accomplish that goal by quadrupling fundraising and more than quadrupling our impact from the year prior.
In 2021, SALT had the challenge to triple our fundraising over the previous year to over $1,000,000 and as a result, build the capacity to triple their impact. SALT was able to meet that goal as well. Every week, there was a new challenge we faced as a team but we were able to push through and we continue to push through with God’s help!
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
SALT Outreach operates a mobile drop-in center for the unsheltered through the use of vehicles and trailers. SALT offers 10 different services which include showers, laundry, haircuts, case management, storage, charging stations, food, hygiene products, clothing, and mail services. Over the course of the pandemic, SALT has served over 4,000 people more than 150,000 times. Our center acts as a front door for someone experiencing homelessness.
We meet the basic need and continue to do so while building relationships, with the aim of getting them to our case management team which can help to end their homelessness. SALT will refer out to the other amazing organizations in the area that can help them take their next step to end their homelessness. If there is a gap in services SALT will use its resources to meet the gap when necessary.
As far as we know, we are the largest and only mobile drop-in center in Florida. Most drop-in centers are buildings. Being a mobile drop-in center provides an even lower barrier solution for someone experiencing homelessness since it is outside. One advantage of this is many cities may not be able to convince stakeholders to bring a drop-in center to their city, however it is mobile and if stakeholders of any city are seeing too many people gather the mobile drop-in center can just be moved!
I believe SALT’s brand has really attracted a lot of young people who want to make a difference in their community. We believe throughout the years SALT’s brand communicates unity, innovation, and meaningful impact. SALT truly emphasizes relationships. We believe genuine relationships are a key aspect in helping to end homelessness among the unsheltered.
With our growth in such a short time one of our biggest needs is in the overhead and administrative costs. In order to continue operating and grow our operation we need the administrative professionals supporting otherwise we may not be able to continue serving at the same capacity.
What are your plans for the future?
Our vision is to expand our mobile drop-in center to every metropolitan area that has that need in the US.
We have started to slowly expand to other cities in Central Florida but we believe the mobile drop-in center concept can be a huge support to cities in helping to end homelessness. Since we serve such a high volume of clients we are also working on using the data we collect to develop strategies that can be shared in helping to end homelessness as well.
Contact Info:
- Email: eric@saltoutreach.org
- Website: www.saltoutreach.org
- Instagram: instagram.com/saltoutreach
- Facebook: facebook.com/saltoutreachinc
