About: The Open Door Shelter. opendoorshelter.org
Open Doors’ mission is to effectively address the causes and complexities of the homeless and working poor by providing shelter, food, clothing, case management services, treatment services, transitional planning for short and long term goals, subsidized housing, education, employment, and a path towards independence and success.
We provide emergency shelter with over 95 beds able to accommodate individuals and families. In the same building, we operate a kitchen and pantry that provides food to the community. We serve three meals each day (over 77,000 in the past year) and provide shelf-stable groceries, baked goods, and fresh produce to low-income individuals and families to help them make ends meet. Between the kitchen and the pantry, we provide more than 300,000 meals each year to individuals and families in our community.
How you can contribute:
In need always of food donations, volunteers for cooking and food serving services, job training assistance, working with after school kids, clothing donations and would always appreciate any monetary donations. Recently opened the “Community Closet” in a large room in the new Smilow Life Center building which does a fabulous job of collecting slightly used clothing of all types for everyone from infants to the elderly. The “Closet” is open from 10-12 for deserving members of our communities to come in and select just about whatever they need and it is all distributed free of charge.
David Lindsay has been working there every Wednesday morning since November and it is extremely rewarding and extremely eye opening to see the needs some of these people have who live only miles from our homes. Clients are only allowed to come in once per month, but every day the Closet is open we have over 30 clients come through and sometimes we will have up to 50. On a busy day people will have to wait an hour or more to get their opportunity to “shop”. It’s a wonderful cause!!!!!
DMA Participants:
David Lindsay