Volunteers!

We LOVE volunteers here at HOME Youth & Resource Center.  Since we have such a small staff - and limited financial resources - we really would have trouble functioning without the help of volunteers.  They come from all over - churches, colleges, businesses.  Some come once for a specific project,  others carve out a regular part of their life to spend time here.  Last year, 276 volunteers contributed 3177 hours here and THAT'S pretty impressive.  (We were so fortunate to have an AmeriCorps member, Gerald Pygott, develop our volunteer management program last year)

We were very lucky to have the energetic Ambassador's Club from 1st Christian Church - one of our neighbors - "adopt" us last year and made up a fair portion of those hours.  They painted rooms, laid carpet tiles all OVER, designed a space for our garbage bins, fixed Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.  And there's more...When we said we needed a bicycle stand so that youth could lock their bikes up and not leave them laying around, the group bought and installed one for us.  
AND, they removed our old basketball stand and replaced the entire area with cement.  The project became a HOME event as staff, youth and volunteers enjoyed a BBQ dinner (cooked by Gerald, also a professional chef) and made a "lasting impression" by putting their handprints into the cement. 
What an awesome group!!  Here are some pictures of the event:

Fall is when we begin lining up college students and other volunteers for the coming months.  The Ambassador Club has already offered to prepare our Thanksgiving dinner for us.  And we've already got students from Chemeketa, Willamette and Western Oregon commited to helping out in a variety of ways.

Three cheers for volunteers!!