Meet Mary Wilson and Chelsea Shoff | Chelsea – President, co-founder / Mary – Vice President, co-founder

We had the good fortune of connecting with Mary Wilson and Chelsea Shoff and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Chelsea and Mary, maybe we can start at the very start – the idea – how did you come up with the idea for your business?
The Oasis Project is a 501c3 located in South Florida that exists to provide holistic resources to our local community through building relationships to motivate people to walk in their God given purpose. We came up with the idea to start this non-profit because when we looked around our community we saw so much darkness and destruction. People are so lost and so desperate to belong and have no one in their corner to call out their purpose and believe in them. Busyness has taken over everyones lives, that we miss seeing the person on the side of the road starving, the abused woman barely holding on, the parents overwhelmed to provide, the child who doesn’t feel like they have a safe place. Our non-profit has many branches – Foster/Adoptive Network, Homeless, Inner City programs, food distributions and more. Right now, we are currently focusing on our Foster Network that currently has over 100 families in our program, representing over 250 kids in those families that we provide practical necessities and a community of support to these families through a free foster closet, meal deliveries, day to day support and assistance! We want to be an Oasis in our community – a place of safety, revival, restoration.

Can you open up a bit about your work and career? We’re big fans and we’d love for our community to learn more about your work.
Before Covid we would go to local parks and feed the homeless. Through weekly meet ups, we were able to connect with a few homeless people and realized some of them really wanted change, but didn’t know where to start. So we started dreaming what it would look like to have a place where people could go, and figure out their God given purpose. Then a year later Covid hit and it put our dream on hold. As the world grew darker, we realized we need to bring some light and hope back to a hopeless world. Oasis was formed the few month after the Pandemic and we found it was difficult to find places to serve with all of the restrictions in place.

God opened doors to serve foster families. We now are able to come along side of families we and have 200 kids in our program. We are so excited to see the doors God opened to serve more people. Such as homeless, sex traffic victims, substance abuse and more. We can’t wait to be an oasis to many more lives.

Who else deserves some credit and recognition?
The only person that deserves recognition for The Oasis Project, our impact made thus far, and the impact to come is Jesus. He put this vision in out hearts and he has made it happen and He gets all the glory!

Website: www.theoasisprojectflorida.org

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theoasisproject_

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheOasisProjectFlorida