On the last Sunday of every month, a team of volunteers pulls into two extended-stay motels near Gwinnett Place Mall in Duluth, Georgia. Together the properties hold more than 250 rooms, and inside them live roughly 90 children who call a motel room home, at least for now.

Kids Motel Ministry, a program of HireLiving Inc, shows up there every month with Bible stories, music, games, and a hot meal. It also shows up with something more practical: help covering a short-term rent gap, a bag of school clothes, or a plan for finding a real apartment.

HireLiving launched the ministry in 2017 as an extension of its core work helping people find stable jobs. Executive Director Cindy Jones and her volunteer team built relationships with the motel managers themselves, which is how a monthly kids’ program grew into a broader support system for the whole family.

The ministry runs entirely on donations and volunteer time. It receives no state, local, or federal funding, which means every gathering, every meal, and every family moved into stable housing happens because someone chose to give.

Life Inside the Motels

The families Kids Motel Ministry serves are living in temporary housing for all kinds of reasons: a job loss, a medical bill, a sudden move. Many are single parents raising kids alone while working to get back on their feet. Duluth, Norcross, and Peachtree Corners together are home to an estimated 2,000 school-age children living in motels, so the two properties the ministry currently serves are a start, not the whole need.

For the kids themselves, a monthly gathering means something to look forward to. It means someone remembers their birthday, someone notices when they need shoes, and someone shows up again next month.

Kids Motel Ministry organizes its work around a few consistent programs.

• Monthly Kids Ministry: animated Bible stories, worship with music and dance, games, small prizes, and a group cleanup activity that gets kids and volunteers working side by side.
• Practical family support: holiday meals, back-to-school clothing, and help covering short-term housing costs for families at risk of losing their room.
• Career coaching: free coaching for single parents, an outgrowth of HireLiving’s core employment work that the ministry began offering during the pandemic and has continued since.
• Housing transitions: for families ready to move, help finding and fully furnishing an apartment, turning a motel room into a real home.

Local businesses have started noticing the work too. In early 2026, Metro Atlanta appliance repair company Appliance EMT donated several thousand dollars to the ministry and pledged a share of its service fees for the month to support families living in extended-stay motels, one example of how the ministry has grown through community partnerships rather than government grants.

Turning Motel Rooms Into Homes

Cindy Jones and her team measure success one family at a time: a child who has a place to be on a Sunday afternoon, a parent who lands a job through HireLiving’s coaching, a family who finally signs a lease on an apartment of their own. None of that happens without the people willing to fund it.

Explore more about their mission and how you can support them here: Kids Motel Ministry

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