The Home Builders Foundation (HBF) and Key Home Furnishings recently donated over $6,000 of furniture for our upcoming women’s day room and program, called Connect. The furniture donation – which includes tables, chairs, rugs, decor, and plants – beautifully fills the new space from a large renovation project that turned the second floor of our Burnside Shelter into an area for homeless women to engage in communal, relationship-driven programs and activities. Additional donations, discounts on soft furniture and anything of the sort is also welcome.
Tina, now a resident at Shepherd’s Door, knows first-hand what it feels like to be a homeless woman on the streets of Portland. She’d been well-educated, held steady jobs, and never had any problems with the law. Despite all that, her alcohol addiction slowly but surely began to erode her life – eventually landing her on the streets, totally unprepared for life as a homeless woman.
“I got beat up. Jumped. Robbed,” Tina said. “I’m not street smart or anything, and living on the streets is hard. Not only that, but it’s humiliating and degrading. Having something like [Portland Rescue Mission’s homeless women’s facility] would have been a Godsend. A place like that – and something so nice – to give you hope to rebuild your life and get back to where you started from – that would be awesome.”
Before
The generous furniture donation is helping us create just what Tina described. “Providing safe, dignified places for those experiencing homelessness is a top priority of our Foundation,” says Ken Cowdery, Executive Director of HBF. “We are particularly interested in supporting programs that focus on those who are most vulnerable. Outcomes tend to be much better if people feel respected and surroundings are very important in that regard.”
After
The new furniture moves us one step closer to launching Connect, our new program to help homeless women transition off the streets. It will operate similarly to Link, which has been extremely effective in its 1+ years of operating. Not long after completing construction, we also received a generous grant that will allow us to fund Connect for the next three years. All that remains before we can launch the program is the hiring of several staff members to work with the women.
ALSO READ: Our Link Ministry has helped dozens of men transition off the streets. Ron is one of them – read his story here.
Interested in working with homeless women in our Connect ministry? Please check out our jobs page here for details and the full list of open positions. As always, we would greatly appreciate your prayers that we’d be able to launch this ministry soon and effectively help homeless women transition out of homelessness.
To donate financially, please visit www.PortlandRescueMission.org/Give.
Thank you for your continued support!