About

Shara Gonzales has been the Executive Director of New Beginnings, Inc., a community development organization in Hutchinson, Kansas for over 20 years. New Beginnings is a method that is designed to help people who have lost everything return to the fullness of life within the community.

It reflects her belief that our human experiences lead us to understandings about ourselves and of life. This is the wisdom handed to us at at birth from our fathers and mothers and their fathers and mothers for many generations  back into our history. As stated by some of her indigenous friends “You carry your whole history in your blood”. Those lessons are then passed on to our children and to theirs as well. It is the beauty of creation; always learning; patience beyond measure; growing towards the people we are to become.

How these greater truths get applied to everyday life is the message she has carried through out her life.

From her experiences serving Guatemalans after their 1976 earthquake, helping the Hopi in the Southwest, the Lakota in South Dakota, and the homeless in her home town, Shara has demonstrated a tireless resolve to creating long-term solutions for men, women, and children in crisis.

Because of her vision, New Beginnings has gone from a dilapidated boarding house-turned shelter, to include an overnight shelter, 36 units of transitional housing for the homeless, and over one hundred affordable housing homes in three apartment complexes and individual homes and provides housing for several Oxford Houses which offer a sober living model. Current projects include the creation of town homes as workforce housing, a transitional jobs program for the hard to employ, and permanent supportive housing for those with barriers to housing.

These experiences have given her a unique insight on what works and what does not work in America and the world. She provides a voice for those without one. This blog will provide wisdom, historical insight, inspiration for the future, and ways for readers to get involved wherever they live.