Take the Next Step

Community Resource Center: participants / clients receive immediate assistance to meet their daily needs emergency food, gas and bus cards to help with transportation to medical and job appointments, cold weather gear, and shelter items like tents and sleeping bags. Center Navigators walk alongside clients through housing and job searches, access to addiction and mental health services, and connection to additional resources. From March through December, we delivered over $220,000 in direct financial assistance to 170 families struggling with the impacts of COVID.

Homeless Community Outreach - Community Dinners and Cold Weather Shelter: when COVID forced the closure of our Resource Center and suspension of Community Dinners, we loaded up our van with food, hygiene supplies, clothing and supplies and drove throughout our community to ensure our homeless neighbors were safe and well. Volunteers prepared and filled big grocery bags of healthy, no-cook food and other supplies more than 2,600 bags-full! We discovered far more meaningful conversations and outcomes with our homeless neighbors when we go out to meet them where they are.

Kidz Club and Student Leaders after school programs: we followed the mandated the closure of schools and suspended our programs in March. Our staff checked in with families every week to make certain they were safe and well, and to help with remote school-related issues like how to sign up for discounted internet service and then, how to connect school-provided Chromebooks to Zoom school. Every month volunteers filled huge Kidz Pack gift bags with snacks, fun activities, games, a bit of academic work, and the library donated over 1,000 books. Staff and volunteers delivered the Packs to homes and kept up their relationships with both children and families.