What's for dinner?

Yum…is that lasagna that I smell? Alternative House’s Emergency Shelter provides services for over 200 youth a year, on average there are 75 youth involved in our Community Outreach programs everyday, as well as the mothers and youth involved in our Assisting Young Mothers program and Homeless Youth Initiative. That translates into huge need for snacks and meals for these young people. During the average week while school is in session, Alternative House provides 56 breakfasts, 28 lunches, 487 snacks, and 455 dinners. Volunteers are essential in helping us in this monumental task. We have several volunteer groups and individual volunteers who drop off or prepare meals for our programs. Some volunteers will prepare a meal just once while others prepare meals either weekly or monthly. Regardless, this is a huge help to our staff. By providing meals for our Emergency Shelter for Teenagers and Outreach programs, volunteers allow our staff to focus on individual coaching sessions with teens rather than meal preparation. In the Community Outreach program these snacks and meals represent food that the youth might otherwise not have access to. By providing meals for the Assisting Young Mothers program volunteers are helping the mothers by alleviating one of the many tasks of their personal, work, and family life that they are trying to balance. All of our programs eat family-style meals and this helps them to know that other people care about them and have the opportunity to interact with positive adult role models. Thank you to all who help us feed the youth we serve and please contact us if you would be interested in helping to provide snacks or meals for our programs.