What Your Donation Buys…
Posted by admin on
August 18, 2010
We are so thankful to everyone who donates to the House of Hope. Below is a sample of what our funds are used for in order to keep the shelter up and running:
- $25 buys paper towels, napkins, and toilet paper for a week.
- $25 buys laundry detergent for all families and shelter needs for one week.
- $50 buys a complete back-to-school outfit including brand name sneakers for one of our youngsters.
- $50 will cover the cost of supper for one night.
- $75 will cover the cost of diapers for one month.
- $125 will cover the monthly cost of resident postage required for housing applications and other business.
- $200 will cover the cost of 12-step program material for a year.
- $350 will enable the replacement of old carpeting with allergy-free linoleum in one of our bedrooms.
- $500 will allow us to rent a bus for a day to bring the whole House of Hope Community on an educational or recreational field trip.
- $600 will cover the average cost of electricity or natural gas (heating) for a month.
- $800 will buy a new computer and remedial learning software for our homework area.
- $1,000 will provide all aspects of emergency shelter for one family for one week.
Great Article in The Lowell Sun
Posted by admin on
June 22, 2010
The House of Hope was recently featured in an article by Jennifer Myers in The Lowell Sun:
A gift every child deserves
Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our MyCapture site.
LOWELL — A delighted screech emanates from under gobs of blue frosting and chunks of yellow cake.
Clad only in a diaper (and a thick layer of cake), Jaydis Christian is the happiest guy in the room.
It is his first birthday. He may not know how to walk or talk, but the kid knows how to get his party on.
On the other side of the dining room table, Alberto Vargas’ big brown eyes grow wide as he opens the gift bag. A Smurf football. A Spider-Man truck, which the box boasts comes with “a crime fighting battering ram.”
“Mine!” Alberto announces proudly, hugging the football tight as he celebrates his third birthday.
“Who wants cupcakes?” yells Adam Gilman, 13, of Bedford. He gently hands a miniature cupcake to
Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our MyCapture site.
birthday girl Geomari Pagan, who will be 1-year-old this week.Jaydis, Alberto and Geomari are among more than 17,000 homeless children in Massachusetts. They are staying at the House of Hope, a family shelter on Merrimack Street, with their moms.
“Without us, some of these kids would never have a birthday, and that is not something that a kid should ever go without,” says Adam Gilman. “It is like a right to have a birthday.”
Adam and his sister Kaitlyn, 10, and their parents, Jeff and Alysa, have been coordinating birthday parties for kids living at the shelter since last October. They are volunteering with Birthday Wishes, a nonprofit organization founded in Newton in 2002 by Lisa Vasiloff, Karen Yahara and Carol Zwanger.
“We did some research and discovered that there were no organizations out there providing that kind of a service,” she adds. “The shelters themselves and the parents are often not financially or emotionally able to throw a party and that is where we come in.”
Today, Birthday
Sun staff photos can be ordered by visiting our MyCapture site.
Wishes throws about 1,500 parties a year, touching the lives of more than 3,000 kids who are either the honorees or who attend the parties in 114 shelters across Massachusetts, Rhode Island and Long Island, N.Y.The organization boasts 400 active volunteers every month.
Before she was married or had children, Alysa Gilman volunteered at the Bread and Roses soup kitchen in Lawrence every Monday night. One night, upon discovering that it was the 65th birthday of one of the guests, she and some of the other volunteers got a cake, put a candle in it and presented it to him.
They sang.
He cried.
It was the first birthday cake he ever had.
That experience stayed with Alysa Gilman. Last fall, when the family was searching for a community-service project for Adam to work on as part of his bar mitzvah, she came across Birthday Wishes. It was a perfect fit.
“They are really going at it — yikes!” exclaims Adam as he is bombarded by a flurry of bean bags being rocketed at his head and torso by a pack of maniacally laughing 3-, 4- and 5-year-olds trying to throw the bags through the holes in the “Bee Toss” cloth held up by Adam and Kaitlyn.
“I have only been here a month, so I wasn’t expecting anything,” says Alberto’s mom, Jessenia. “This is really nice.”
It is a controlled chaos as toddlers chase elusive balloons across the dining room floor. Party hats and glitter cover the tables. Everyone is laughing.
Kaitlyn calls all of the kids to sit at the tables. It is craft time. The room grows quiet as a dozen kids focus intently on gluing mermaids, seashells and dolphins onto cloth bags. It is Kaitlyn’s favorite part of the party.
Jeff carries the ocean-themed cake out into the dining room. It was baked by another Birthday Wishes volunteer. Chocolate goldfish swim through an elaborate underwater world or sparkling blue frosting.
“This has been really great,” says Adam. “It has united us as a family because it is something we can do together.”
“The Gilmans are just fantastic,” says Vasiloff. “They are truly committed and enthusiastic and really spend time deciding what the right gifts are for each child. They put so much thought into each party that they do, and that they are doing this as a family is such a great thing.”
Birthday Wishes recently secured office space in Lowell, in the Eastern Bank building on Central Street. The office is not yet staffed and they are looking for volunteers in this area.
There are two volunteer levels available through Birthday Wishes. Those wishing to contribute to a specific party can do so by checking the organization’s website where needed items are listed: gifts for birthday boys and girls, cakes, goody bags and other party items.
Volunteers can also sign up to conduct toy drives or help out at a party.
The second level of volunteering is to become a party coordinator, which is what the Gilmans do. Party coordinators sign up for a minimum one-year commitment and are assigned top a specific shelter to run the monthly party for all of the kids living there celebrating a birthday within that month.
For more information about Birthday Wishes, visit www.birthdaywishes.org or call 866-388-9474.
Read more: http://www.lowellsun.com/ci_15338097?IADID=Search-www.lowellsun.com-www.lowellsun.com#ixzz0raHw4i8H
Update to Our Shelter
Posted by admin on
June 14, 2010
House of Hope was recently awarded $48,196 from the Franklin Square Foundation to update our shelter. Below is a portion of our application description for what this very generous grant will be used towards. We are so thankful for this generous grant and look forward to updating our shelter so that we may better serve more families.
O
ur proposal perfectly aligns with our core principles and strategic planning as a major upgrade of our furnishings with quality fixtures will communicate the deep regard that have for our families. For more then 25 years we have utilized and jerry rigged and made do with donated bedroom furniture and asked families to “make the best of it” when bed slats fell out or bureau drawers had no handles. Today, well into our 26th year of service to poor women and their children, after adding onto our building, upgrading the electrical, replacing the heating system, rebuilding the façade, installing walk in refrigerator and freezer, installing a sprinkler, upgrading our bathrooms, addressing handicap accessibility, removing carpet and rebuilding bedroom floors, building a playground and creating respectful office space it is time to ask for help in acquiring quality, functioning and appealing furniture and fixtures. The way House of Hope has addressed its own needs is much the way we guide our families; health, safety, function and then form. It is time for House of Hope to embrace form and make sure that all functional realities in our shelter communicate our affection and care for our families.
Although we are asking for support from Franklin Square House Foundation to upgrade by replacing all bedroom and common area furniture in our largest 18 unit facility this is not the entire undertaking as we will also paint the entire exterior of the building, replace broken windows, install professional grade window bars (right now we use home made, wood planks), replace both front and rear main access doors and replace poorly functioning residential grade toilets with higher quality near commercial class commodes.
House of Hope is committed to rolling out all of these capital improvements because we believe that these upgrades will support the delivery of service to the many families who rely on us for short term shelter and permanent housing placement and support. If our furniture is ragged and worn and mismatched then it is far too easy to assume that our services, programming and commitment is too. We hope that with help from the Franklin Square Foundation we will be able to roll out a 100% replacement of our commonly used furniture. Once we have what we need we will implement a replacement plan that is manageable.
All useable furniture will be made available to residents moving out of shelter or to our local furniture bank so that there will be no waste of useable items.
Enterprise Bank’s 2010 Celebration of Excellence
Posted by admin on
June 14, 2010
Deb Chausse, the Executive Director of the House of Hope, was recently nominated to be awarded Enterprise Bank’s 2010 Celebration of Excellence Award. Click here to read more about the Enterprise 2010 Celebration of Excellence.
