Ar-Ray of Hope, Inc.
“Proverbs 31:8-9 Speak up for those who can’t speak for themselves, for the rights who are destitute. Open thy mouth wide and judge righteously and plead the cause of the poor and needy.”
Welcome to the website of Ar-Ray of Hope, Inc in Beverly Hills, California. We provide medical, legal, and housing assistance to help abandoned men, women, and children. Our nonprofit organization is currently accepting volunteers for our sear​ch and rescue team. If you’re interested in helping our cause either by volunteering or donating, please contact us.
We offer free counselling, too. Get in touch with us for
more details.
Testimonials
Coming Soon
Our Mission
The goal of our organization is to reach out to abandoned individuals and help them toward the road to recovery. We want them to heal from the despair and trauma that they have experienced in the past, be it from toxic relationships or other devastating events.
Who We Are
In 1986, our nonprofit organization fed homeless men, women, and children every Saturday in a park located in downtown Jackson, Mississippi. This went on until 1988. We continued helping those in need after moving to Los Angeles in 1990, assisting individuals in Los Angeles, Orange County, and Antelope Valley.
In Mississippi, the director, Elicia Frank, dedicated 95% of her time to the organization. She used my own money as funds and relied on food donations from grocery stores and local neighbors. Together with my husband, we also did fundraisers where we carried signs in the park across from the Governor’s mansion. Those signs contained messages that encouraged the public to gain awareness of homelessness in the City. All of this was done with a permit from the chief of police (Chief White).
We also searched for the homeless and needy throughout the city. We fed them, provided resources for housing, gave them job leads, and gave them clothes and hygiene products. Aside from these, we also took them to shelters. Most of the people we encountered were men, women and children who were abandoned or forsaken due to domestic violence, homelessness.
In 1990, Elicia started walking down the freeway with her 5-month-old and 2-year-old daughters toward California, because her husband abandoned them while they were living in a car. Her father tried to take her children from her because Elicia didn’t have any beds in her apartment. But instead, they moved to California to rebuild dilapidated homes in East Los Angeles and its surrounding areas.
In 1990 to 2009, our organization fed, gave clothes, bought shoes, and provided blankets to the homeless community that we were assisting. We also visited motels to see if they were clean enough for the people under our care.
Moreover, our organization provided shelters, counseling, job leads from job fairs, resources for legal assistance, and medical assistance to the homeless men, women, and children of Orange County. We held motivating meeting, fed hot meals to those interested individuals at a church every Wednesday night for 2 years.
Get to Know Elicia Frank, Our Director
Elicia was sexually abused when she was an infant. The Uncle who committed it told her w​hat happened in the backroom of their house. The confession from her relative confirmed all the reoccurring dreams that had tormented Elicia—it was not a figment of her imagination, but an actual crime committed on her younger self! However, he told her that she needed to move on with her own life because he was in recovery.​
When Elicia was 4 years old, she confronted the same Uncle while he was abusing her brother on the green couch in her parents’ home. Her family member was in college at the time and while she was able to stop him from harming her brother, he started abusing her. She was also abused by her immediate family member as a child. Years later, her husband slapped her to the floor resulting in a still birth after the incident. Because of everything she’s been through, Elicia has been an advocate against abuse since she could remember.
In 1992, Elicia’s husband abandoned her with their two daughters while she was 4 months pregnant. She found out that he had been abusing their children after he left. They moved to Oakland in December 1993 to get away from her husband, but came back to Los Angeles in January 1994 the same day as the earthquake, due to immediate housing. When they left the motel they were staying at, they found a studio apartment in Hollywood, California. It had space for four people, it was small but sufficient.
In September 1994, Elicia and her children experienced a terrible situation. They moved to an apartment above a garage in Los Angeles, California; in front of it was a house where several homeless people lived in a three-bedroom residence. The house collapsed the same day we moved in due to the earthquake that occurred in January of that year. The tenants were unable to get out, the doors were jammed shut, and the manager took several hours to come and assist them.
This catastrophe left Elicia and her three kids without gas for months until the city and construction builders could finally repair the house and its foundation. Because of this, she couldn’t cook on the stove until they were finished. They had a microwave and hot plate to cook on but no hot water. This all occurred during the El Niño rainy storms and seasons in Los Angeles, in short, when flooding and rain occurred daily for weeks. She had to walk with three small children in flooded streets just to take her eldest to school.
They couldn’t take a shower because the foundation or floor of the shower was cracked. If they did, water would leak down the stairs to the front entrance of the stairs and may cause someone to slip and fall. A sister from another church Elicia attended bought them a tin tub where they could take baths in. Her three kids were able to fit, but Elicia could not.
They also had a toilet that was clogged from October to December 1994. Her ex-husband came by and unplugged the toilet. The manager and landlord never sent a plumber to fix it. While the social services told Elicia to call the health department, she was hesitant to reach out to them in fear of retaliation.
Elicia and her children were able to take a real bath in a tub in December 1994 and her ex-husband asked her to forgive him. As she sat in a bathtub big enough for her to stretch her legs, Elicia promised that she would never let another woman or child not be able to take a bath. She scrubbed her body from head to toe with a peach body wash from Caress, a gift from a member of church name Sister Linda. She was planning to write the Caress company and thank them for creating a product that included items that made her feel special, not a forsaken being who did not exist.
She changed the locks on their door because they weren’t working. They also had a shoebox that served as their mailbox placed on the front porch of the vacant house in the front. We were told by the owner that the apartment above the garage we were staying in was condemned by the fire department months prior to us moving in.
How We Started
Elicia established Ar-Ray of Hope, Inc because of all the hardships she faced. Her mother had to finish her degree, so she was left with relatives who abused her since she was an infant until she was a toddler. As an adult, she was abused physically, sexually, and mentally. On top of that, she was also homeless for more than 10 years.
As a 9th grader, Elicia went to a party. However, when her father got to the celebration, she was nowhere in sight. When she came home, her daddy slapped her and beat her with a belt buckle that left welts all over her back and body. Her mom tried to stop him, but he said that he’ll go for her next, so she just walked away hurriedly. Elicia tried to overdose on pills the next day, but she threw them up instead. She called a shelter to pickup her mom, brother, and sister, but the white van never showed up. If it did, she didn’t see it because she stopped looking outside out because of fear.
Years later, Elicia spotted an elderly African-American pushing a shopping cart down the street while she was at work. She started weeping uncontrollably. Elicia wanted to walk out of the door, quit her job, and help out the old lady. This was the reason that she started feeding the homeless community. She also searched for the old woman with the cart while helping out others.
Elicia finally found the elderly woman after 2 years. She was sitting on the porch of a home without food or electricity. Elicia went home and gave her a plate filled with food to eat.