CHARLES BENDER / PLACE OF HOPE
Someone
to call.
A birthday. A new home. A return to family.
Charles Bender keeps asking what support comes next.
By Rob Urban · The Inspiration Series
A birthday is a strange place to draw the boundary of care.
At eighteen, a young person may be legally ready for responsibilities that still require years of practice. Housing, work, education, transportation and the small mysteries of running a household do not suddenly arrange themselves around a birthday cake. Most of us needed somebody to call. Some of us still do, particularly when the appliance makes that noise.
Charles L. Bender III has spent much of his career building support around the points where a young person’s circumstances change faster than their resources. As the founding CEO of Place of Hope in Palm Beach Gardens, he helped develop an organization whose work extends from foster care to young adulthood, with housing and practical assistance along the way.
The scale has changed considerably since the early years. The underlying question remains recognizable: what does this person need next, and who is going to stay involved long enough to help?
Before
the cottages.
Bender arrived at Place of Hope in 1999 with experience in Palm Beach County housing and human services. His official biography includes work with county housing and community development, Adopt-A-Family of the Palm Beaches and the City of Delray Beach. He studied sociology at Florida Atlantic University and also attended the University of South Florida.
That is a useful preparation for an organization with a physical footprint. Creating a residential program requires land, construction, approvals, operating money and people qualified to provide care. A good intention must become a place that can function on an ordinary weekday.
The project grew out of Christ Fellowship’s vision, with Bender initially involved as a volunteer in its development. He subsequently took on the work of implementation and leadership. His account includes directing infrastructure and housing construction as the organization took shape.
I find the infrastructure part revealing. It is easy to admire a finished campus. It takes another kind of patience to work through the unphotogenic stages that make one possible. Somebody has to stay interested in the details long after the initial announcement.
In his opening letter to the 2025 impact report, Bender presents the work in explicitly Christian terms. That conviction belongs in his story. So does the administrative experience that allows conviction to become an operating organization.
A brother.
A sister.
A shared history.
Place of Hope’s neighborhood foster care model uses licensed cottages with trained, live-in foster parents. The organization emphasizes sibling groups, including larger groups that can be difficult to place together. Its stated aim is to preserve those relationships whenever possible while providing a consistent home environment.
The word together carries a great deal of weight here. A child entering foster care has already experienced a major disruption. A brother or sister may be one of the few people who shares the same family history, remembers the same ordinary details and understands what has changed without needing a long explanation.
A program designed to accommodate siblings is therefore making a practical decision with emotional consequences. It affects how homes are organized, how adults are recruited and supported, and what kinds of placements the organization can accept.
The cottages are also intended to allow ordinary childhood to continue: local schools, extracurricular activities, help with learning and familiar routines. Those activities can look small beside the larger language of child welfare. For a child, they are much of the substance of a day.
Bender’s role is not the same as the role of the adults living in those homes. The institution depends on their daily work, along with case managers, educators, donors and community partners. His contribution has been to help build and sustain the setting in which that work can happen.
Adulthood needs
room to practice.
The organization expanded into transitional housing through Villages of Hope in 2006. Today, its young adult programs combine affordable housing with education planning, workforce preparation, mentoring and practical life skills. They also serve young people experiencing homelessness and, through Mommy & Me, single mothers with dependent children.
The details make the purpose clearer. A resident may need budgeting support and transportation at the same time. A young mother may need a stable home while working toward a credential. The organization describes furnished two-bedroom, two-bathroom cottages for its Mommy & Me program, with a renewable two-year independent-living model.
That gives the idea of preparation a place to happen. It is difficult to learn how to manage a household while having no dependable household to manage.
The program is faith-based, and its published guidance says residents may be of any faith or none. That is a meaningful detail for a reader trying to understand both the source of the organization’s values and whom its services are intended to reach.
Education adds another layer. Through its Education & Enrichment work, Place of Hope connects young people with mentoring, scholarships, career experiences and the Excel Leadership Institute. Its published curriculum includes taxes, credit, budgeting and public speaking.
There is a pleasing lack of glamour in parts of that list. Understanding a tax form rarely appears in a cinematic montage about discovering your future. It becomes considerably more interesting when the form is yours.
The organization’s account of its 2025 graduates also shows why a single definition of achievement would be inadequate. It includes high school completion, college degrees and professional credentials. Different paths can represent equally serious effort. A useful support system needs enough flexibility to recognize them.
Home is
another beginning.
One of the most consequential features of Place of Hope’s current work is its attention to families after reunification. Olive Branch Family Care offers practical help to families whose children have returned home after foster care.
That may mean furniture, bedding, groceries, clothing or assistance during an emergency, alongside parenting resources and mentoring. The premise is straightforward: a major milestone can still leave a family with ordinary material needs and a difficult transition ahead.
This is where a story about an institution can become a story about continuity. The child does not stop needing support simply because the address or formal status has changed. The family’s next challenge may be less visible than the crisis that brought them into contact with services, but it still matters.
The same attention to successive stages appears in the organization’s geographic growth. Its Bender Family Campus in Stuart brings together foster care, education, outreach and housing for young adults and mothers. The campus account credits the many families and organizations that contributed to its development. The name on the campus sits within a much larger network of commitments.
What I admire is the willingness to regard each of these transitions as a fresh responsibility. A placement, a birthday or a return home may settle one question while opening several others. Building something that remains useful across them takes patience, resources and a willingness to keep revising the answer. Bender’s work has given that willingness a set of homes, programs and people who can still be there when the next birthday arrives.
Keep the people
in the picture.
Place of Hope’s foster care, young adult housing and family reunification support pages explain the work in more detail.
Sources: Bender’s official biography; Place of Hope’s program descriptions, Stuart campus account and 2025 impact report. Reviewed September 2026. Program descriptions are the organization’s; reflections are Rob Urban’s.