Our Story

Lorain Ohio is located in the North East just south of Lake Erie 30 miles west of Cleveland. Its current diverse population is slightly greater than 64,000. Of the 25k+ households approximately 30% have children under the age of 18. 37% report as married households, 21% single mother households, 6% single father households 30% single no children and 11% are 65 and older living alone. The city is largely Anglo and Latino, with 67.9% identifying as white and 25% of population Hispanic.

The story of Lorain is connected to industry. Over the course of its history and with is unique location to rivers and Lake Erie, this city has thrived on the shoulders of the working class. The city was also the center for a great deal of manufacturing. The American Ship Building Company Lorain Yard, Ford Motor Company Lorain Assembly Plant, and United States Steel Corporation's sprawling steel mill on the city's south at one point were vitals organs to a thriving industrial economy.

While there are ongoing effort to restore Lorain to her former glory, much of the city today is lined with empty store-fronts due to deindustrialization. Essentially, companies found it more most cost effective to move their manufacturing efforts to other areas of the world, and the region lost its primary source of employment. The effects of deindustrialization are far reaching. Lorain’s poverty level is above national average at 26.2%, and the city has a great deal of urban decay. Aside from declining infrastructure and a population that critically under-resourced, the emotional, psychological, and spiritual life of the people has also been affected. Sherry Linkon, in The Half-Life of Deindustrialization, gives voice to the soul of the city.

“Meanwhile, in these same communities, neighbors remember helping each other scrape by as one factory after another closed starting in the late 1970s. They gather every summer for ethnic festivals to eat pizza or pierogies, dance to one of the many variations of polka music from familiar local bands, and catch up with old friends. They take their grandchildren downtown and show them where the local department store used to be. They drive from their suburban homes back into the city every Sunday to go to the church where they and their parents were baptized. Their memories were forged long ago through the shared experiences of working-class life— hard work, neighborhood bars, ethnic churches, and persistence. They also remember the pain of losing good jobs. Many still resent that, as Bruce Springsteen sings in the voice of a Youngstown steelworker, they made the owners “rich enough to forget my name.” Old friends left in search of new jobs, but they stayed because this was home. They watched the community deteriorate, and that, too, strengthened their connections with other people and with the place itself”

The people of city of Lorain have long been noted for embracing an ethic of “hard work” in the factory and mills that used to populate the area. Now much of their “hard work” is channeled into merely surviving. While there exists a strong sense of community in this city many feel their names have been forgotten.

We Care We Share remembers their name.

" God is doing the work at We Care We Share" William Hurley, Co founder & president of WCWS, will tell you. The Hurley family, along with New Beginnings church in Amherst Ohio, helped plant that seeds that founded this ministry. From their founding in 2007 distributing food to neighbor in an abandoned grade school to their present work serving tens of thousands, God has certainly been doing the work.

In 2009 organizing as 501c3, We Care We Share joined forces with Second Harvest Food Bank providing services to hundreds of thousands low-income individuals and families in the city of Lorain. In 2014, the city of Lorain, the Port Authority, donated 2 large building on corner of 32nd st east and Pearl ave in South Lorain. Since that time property has been completely refurbished and host a number of community services.