Holiday Matching Gift Campaign 2021
Homelessness is no place for our youth and the holiday season is an especially difficult time for them. It’s not obvious looking around, but you'd be surprised at the number of youth in our community who don’t have a home to go to tonight. Sadly, the need is greater than ever. The economic and social impacts of Covid-19 are devastating, particularly for vulnerable populations such as youth at risk of homelessness. The demand for our services has never been greater.
The services of Home Horizon target youth experiencing homelessness in the Southern Georgian Bay area. The Barbara Weider House (BWH), our transitional housing program, is staffed 24 hours a day and currently has capacity for seven youth to live in the house and is expanding to ten in the new year. In addition to providing safe, stable and affordable housing, we provide health and life skills education, mentorship, and individualized support plans that help them to set realistic goals and teach them skills that last a lifetime.
In addition to supporting our BWH residents, we launched an outreach program in July 2020 that initially began as a response to Covid-19 to help more struggling youth in the community and on our wait list. Our program targets both the visibly homeless (those living in shelters and on the streets) as well as those who are couch-surfing, sleeping rough or living in unsafe situations with their families. We work with youth facing complex and challenging barriers including poverty, mental health and addictions, sex trafficking, racism, trauma and conflictual home lives. Since the launch, we have served 127 youth, with over 1,085 services interactions (interaction, referrals, supplies, goal setting, workshops, etc.). The program has been an incredible success to date. It helps one of our most vulnerable populations to avoid falling through the cracks.
Helping those facing homelessness in our community is a costly business and sadly there is an overwhelming demand for our services. Currently we have 28 youth on our waitlist. We need your help. We are asking you to give a gift so that youth in our community with nowhere else to go can access supports to help them build a bridge in their life to a stable, healthy future.
Thanks to a matching donation of $30,000 from two of our long-time donors, your donation will have DOUBLE the impact!! Every dollar YOU donate to Home Horizon between now and December 31st will DOUBLE your impact, and supports Home Horizon's delivery of core programming including: Your SAFE Outreach Program, Barbara Weider House Transitional Housing Program and the Essential Life Skills program. With your support, we have the chance to drive real change in our community and help vulnerable youth transform their lives and move forward with their hopes, dreams and life opportunities.
Support Home Horizon by giving the gift of hope & opportunity to youth facing homelessness. Consider a donation, today. We thank you.
