Mission & Vision

Hope House of St. Croix Valley
Announces New Mission and Vision

The Board and Staff of Hope House of St. Croix Valley are thrilled to announce the creation of a new mission and vision for the organization.

Founded in May 1991 by community leaders, Teresa, and Casey VanderBent along with a team of seven founding Taskforce Members and 21 endorsing local Church’s with a mission to provide a nonjudgmental home with compassionate care for people living with HIV. Since our inception, Hope House has served over 90 individuals and their families at our foster care facility located in historic Stillwater, Minnesota.  Giving each Hope, Health, and Home to live their best life.

Since our last strategic planning process in 2018, it became clear that our work at Hope House was in transition. Even with a fresh strategic plan, the board and staff questioned if our continued focus on HIV was still relevant due to the advances in treatment- frankly speaking, would people living with HIV still need the serves we offered at Hope House- had we outgrown our mission?  During our strategic planning process in 2018, we had identified HIV and Aging as our next frontier, it was the next logical step in our evolution as an organization. Then COVID hit, if a pandemic was not enough, racial tensions erupted in our region due to the murder of George Floyd. It became clear it was not the right time to launch a new endeavor- our newest program was put on hold.

Fast forward to summer 2021, coupled with a new awareness about how to maneuver a pandemic, and a deeper understanding, and an organizational commitment to developing programming that embraced diversity, inclusion, and equity we decided as an organization to tackle our future through reevaluating our mission and developing a vision. In a curious twist of events, founder Casey VanderBent, returned to board in 2018 and in May of 2021 was elected as Board Chair- “Having Casey at the helm of the organization as we reevaluated our future brought a sense of confidence that the organization would continue to be a leader in the Home and Community Based Services Sector”, says Matthew Stepaniak, Board Member.

After multiple meetings and much reflection, the board and staff finalized our new mission for Hope House of St. Croix Valley from “providing a nonjudgmental home with compassionate care that respects the dignity of people living with HIV to Hope House will “provide people experiencing life-changing health challenges access to compassionate care that respects their dignity and choices.” Coupled with our new vision “a future where all people have access to programs and services to live their best life!”. “The new Mission and Vision Statements of Hope House reflect the strong leadership the organization currently enjoys and highlight two guiding principles: the continuation of our founding mission to provide a home for people living with HIV/AIDS, an effort that has brought decades of hope, compassion, and acceptance to over 80 residents and their families, and the launching of new programming that will vastly expand our reach by helping more people with a wider variety of needs…effectively delivering that same hope, compassion, and acceptance out to people who wish to remain in the home of their choice,” states Casey VanderBent, 2021-22 Board Chair.

To learn more about how our new mission and vision will impact our work, please contact Bill Tiedemann, Executive Director at bill.tiedemann@hopehousescv.org or at (651)-351-0496.

About Hope House of St. Croix Valley: Located in Historic Stillwater, Minnesota, Hope House has served people living with HIV since its inception in 1991.  With our current mission to provide people experiencing life changing health challenges access to compassionate care that respects their dignity and choices “, we at Hope House, envision a future where all people have access to programs and services to live their best life; we will achieve our vision by offering a robust menu of services to support people regardless of age, race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, illness nor ability to pay to live in place in the home and community of their choice.