We’ve been really busy since February. Last week we released our quarterly news update – if you didn’t get to read it then, read it now.

We’re working towards licensing, which means a lot of things, but mostly means we are all hard at work making sure that we’ve designed the safest and most sensible shelter program we can.  We look forward to being licensed. As a licensed program, we will better be able to connect youth to services through case management, as well as broaden the reach of services we can provide to our guests.

The numbers are up.  We’ve been seeing ten to fourteen youth per night.  That is both startling and amazing to us. We are intensely grateful that they are finding our doors, night after night, and that word is spreading and they are learning to trust us. At the same time, we hurt to we realize that more than forty different youth came to our doors last month. More than forty young people didn’t have anywhere else to go.

I was talking with one of our guests, and he was telling me: “this is really the only place I can sleep without being afraid.” He tells me about sleeping in empty hallways and stairwells, trying sleep but afraid to be found and kicked out or victimized. About sleeping with one eye open and not trusting anyone.  He told me how grateful he was that we were here, because he knew he wasn’t going to get ‘messed with’ – and he could sleep long and hard.  When the youth call it the “Safe Place” – the name the youth use to describe our shelter – we are warmed and blessed.

It just reminds us how needed this service is.  How wonderful it is that we’re able to provide it.

Thank you, Fairbanks, for your ongoing support of our efforts to provide shelter to runaway & homeless youth.

For more ways to help, see our items needed list, sign up to donate through Greater Giving, or apply to volunteer.