Housing Families First - incredible organization. 90-100 homeless families a year
As part of the Hands On RVA (Richmond Va) Regional Day of Service we volunteered there today.
http://www.housingfamiliesfirst.org/
My daughter and I were part of a team that painted one of the rooms. 25x25' I'd say. We knocked it out really in about 2 hours. My wife was part of the cleaning crew in one of the unoccupied rooms.
They have ten rooms with three beds in each. HFF accounts for 25% of the homeless beds in the entire Richmond Va area. I'm not sure if that includes the rotating meal and bed programs at the churches in the city.
This is for families with kids who are homeless. They have to be registered through another organization called Home Again. They can't be actually living in a home (like a friend or family member) so we're talking families living in their car or shipping containers or storage units or outside. I couldn't get an exact percentage but much more than half of the parents are working while being homeless. HFF gets them back on their feet and with another great organization called Caritas provide families with the basic needs of a home - pots pans sheets etc. Caritas also assists with furniture. 89% of families that HFF assists never return to homelessness. They help about 350 people a year - that's roughly 90 to 100 families.
Anyway, really great experience. This was part of my wife's employer's (you've heard of them) initiative to contribute 20 million volunteer hours by 2020. My daughter's school requires that she contribute 20 hours of volunteering each year.
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