My Friend’s Place, 18 Months into the COVID-19 Pandemic (August 2021)

As the world continues to adjust to the "new normal" created by the COVID-19 pandemic,My Friend’s Place is continuing to provide essential care to youth experiencing homelessness. 

The health and safety of our young people, staff members, volunteers and community is our top priority, and we are continuing to track and implement recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control, as well as state and local health departments. 

My Friend's Place is implementing an innovative service model that allows us to safely serve each young person seeking care at My Friend’s Place. Recognizing that we serve both vaccinated and unvaccinated individuals, we offer a hybrid indoor/outdoor service model that includes:

• Provision of food, clothing, shoes and hygiene supplies
• Showers and restroom access
• Individualized resume and job application support
• Housing case management
• Support with animal companions
• Assistance with procuring personal documentation (birth certificates, ID's etc)
• Computer access
• Creative arts and skill-building workshops and opportunities

In addition, My Friend’s Place continues to provide meals and hygiene supplies to adult community members experiencing homelessness as we have done throughout the pandemic. 

How can you help during this time?

• Support our COVID-19 Emergency Response Fund, established to support the critical supplies that will keep our facility clean, ensure that we can continue to provide youth with meals and emergency supplies and cover expenses related to an emergency sick time fund created to support staff health and wellness.
• Provide youth with food in easy to-go bags by assembling snack packs. Please include nonperishable food items like trail mix, granola bars, cookies, chips, fruit snacks, water bottle/juice, etc.
• Shop online through our Amazon Wishlist to help us provide meals, clothing and emergency supplies to our young people during this time. We will continue to update this list to reflect our greatest needs.
• Stay Connected by following My Friend’s Place on our social channels to stay up to date on service changes, emerging needs and to be reminded of the impact that we have together in supporting our young people. Our Facebook, Twitter and Instagram pages can be found at the previous respective links.