Once homeless, Portland outreach worker helps others in Old Town

Table Of Content

• Give the gift of hot meals. $20 pays for 13 meals with coffee.
• Other Senior Housing in Centralia, WA
• National veterinary group brings 24-hour pet care …
• On a mission to alleviate suffering and offer hope for a better life by serving essential aid with dignity.
• Blanchet House celebrates 70 years serving Portland
• Where to Purchase Care Kit Items
• Providence Blanchet House and Providence Rossi House

Blanchet House gives out sack lunches on Saturday afternoons and in between hot meal services. It started with a simple mission to offer food to the unemployed in Old Town. Since then, Blanchet has grown to provide clothing, hygiene items, community, and transitional recovery programs to thousands of people every year downtown and at a farm. We serve breakfast, lunch, and dinner six days a week in the Founders Cafe. Nutritious hot meals are compassionately served by volunteers.

Give the gift of hot meals. $20 pays for 13 meals with coffee.

If you would like to make care kits we ask that you sign up below. We must know ahead of time how many kits you plan to bring. Care kits contain essential relief items for people living homeless. Things like clean socks, a rain poncho, a hand warmer or gloves, bath wipes, and snacks offer comfort to someone living outdoors in difficult conditions. When you give care kits, you are showing kindness and compassion for a fellow human being going through difficult times and enduring cruel living conditions. Your gift will help stabilize lives by providing meals, transitional housing, and other vital services to vulnerable individuals and families.

Other Senior Housing in Centralia, WA

Another thing that we often have to put into the equation is the preppers and the servers and everybody that makes this happen can fluctuate almost as much as the ingredients can. It’s all on having the residents available, having volunteers who are interested in spending time here. That’s a challenge that can happen every day — whether you’ve got those hands — but then not skipping a beat, we still open at the same time every day three meals a day, six days a week.

National veterinary group brings 24-hour pet care …

So, it’s just a blessing when it all works out like this, and it does most all the time. A way you can help people experiencing homelessness is by volunteering with an aid group. At Blanchet House, compassionate people aged 14 and older are needed to serve meals and drinks, organize clothing, and more. COVID vaccinations are required to serve on-site at Blanchet House.

Blanchet House's Building Pathways Home - KATU

Blanchet House's Building Pathways Home.

Posted: Sun, 24 Sep 2023 07:00:00 GMT [source]

This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. She does this work, she said, as a daily reminder to herself — a reminder of her journey out of the “dark days” to a job she’s proud of, and an apartment that’s comfortable and stable. As the line for lunch started forming on the sidewalk outside Blanchet House on a characteristically fickle early spring day in Portland, Coon instantly saw some familiar faces. The material on this site may not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with the prior written permission of Advance Local.

Shahrazi, who attended Wilson High School in Southwest Portland, used to be homeless. He was sleeping on the streets, using drugs and, he said, suffering from schizophrenia. He ate meals at Blanchet House’s main building at 310 N.W. Glisan St. in Old Town and one day learned about the farm. Sutherland suggests people who don’t have a kitchen to prepare foods purchased with SNAP benefits search the internet for local hot meal providers like Blanchet House.

Where to Purchase Care Kit Items

The pandemic forced the nonprofit to shutter its doors, but not to stop service. The last meal served indoors was dinner on March 16, 2020. Without missing a beat, Blanchet House transitioned to packaging its meals and had breakfast service ready the very next morning. Keeping your clothes clean and dry when you’re homeless is a daily struggle. Blanchet House’s guests need adult-sized clothing that is appropriate for being outdoors in the cold and rain.

Providence Blanchet House and Providence Rossi House

For 70 years, Portland’s Blanchet House of Hospitality has had a mission to help people. Founded by a group of University of Portland alumni, the nonprofit serves free, hot meals at its downtown Founders Cafe to anyone who would like one — no questions asked, no barrier for entry. The hot, dry days of summer in a mostly concrete environment greatly increases a human’s need for water. Regular access to clean drinking water is very difficult for people experiencing homelessness in Portland. Our summer care kit addresses the basic needs of survival for someone living outdoors during hot, sunny weather. Blanchet House volunteers offer the care kits that you make to our meal guests daily.

There’s been a lot of changes like with the extra peer support people that are working with the community, it seems like super positive. It takes a community to heal the community and it’s saved me more than once. I started on St. Patrick’s Day, everything was shut down, [and I was] all dressed up, nowhere to go.

Making sack lunches at home is a fun and meaningful way to help the homeless with your family or friends. You can make as few as 10 or as many as 200 sack lunches containing a sandwich, fruit cup, and a wrapped snack. Choose a date from Blanchet House’s online calendar to drop off your lunches.

All are welcome to enjoy meals at Blanchet House without judgment. Make toiletry care kits, sack lunches, or collect clothing and sleeping essentials. The challenges are not really knowing what ingredients you’re always going to have on hand. We just stopped getting really heavy donations lately of tomatoes and cabbage, and sometimes it’s like a whole truckload of broccoli.

Your advisor then provides free, one-on-one guidance by phone or email for as long as you need it. It also shines a light on the pervasive violence and terror experienced by people living on the streets of Old Town, he said. "We knew Scotty well, not only because he came to us a lot but he was a very unique and interesting individual," said Scott Kerman, executive director at Blanchet House. Show your support for our artists and Blanchet House's programs by joining us as a sponsor. "A lot of us homeless carry Narcan just in case too, because you never know," Godfrey said. "It's hard to find but if someone has it for us, we're going to get it and use it."

Coon said she tries not to remember most of those two, no three, no it was actually four years — some of that time pushing a shopping cart along Southeast McLoughlin in the Oak Grove area. Kerman said Blanchet is in the process of evaluating the potential renovation of the Riley House at Northwest Hoyt and 13th Avenue. Blanchet purchased the house in the 1960s with donations left in a will. First and foremost, Blanchet wants to have the resources to meet the elevated needs brought about by the pandemic.

Our awards recognize communities with at least six website reviews from residents and families that average 4.5 stars or more out of 5 in the friendliness category. To mark the 70th birthday of Blanchet, they’re serving an updated version of what they served all those decades ago for the first meal — beans, bread and coffee, and of course a few other items. You have just enough money to purchase a box of macaroni and cheese from a grocery store but nowhere to cook it. For people enrolled in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) while experiencing homelessness, this is a daily predicament. Nonprofit aid groups rely on individual donors like you to operate. Your financial support is critical to services being offered to people in desperate need.

Blanchet House rescues fresh, surplus food from businesses around Portland like Trader Joe’s. We take in more than 300,000 pounds of donated food annually, inspect it for quality, prepare meals and store it, then share extras with peer groups. Blanchet House’s mission and core values embody our commitment to serving anyone in need with dignity and without discrimination or judgment.