Hope House Now Open Wednesdays

As of January 20th, Hope House is now open five days a week. We've added hours on Wednesday afternoon to better accommodate our clients. Previously Hope House's only afternoon hours were on Fridays. Fridays tend to get swamped with clients.

Each day Hope House is open has its own character. We feel a little bit like parents baptizing a new child with our new day. What's it going to be like?

Wednesdays will be staffed by a dedicated mix of St. Paul's and Assumption volunteers who are already forming a top notch team.

Help spread the word that Hope House is now open five days a week!

46% Increase in Clients

Hope House volunteers have lots of explanations for busy days. It's the end of the month, people have run out of social security money, it's sunny out, it's Thursday, it's Friday, it's Monday, it's Tuesday...well, you get the idea. Lately, Hope House has seen busy days every day.

Whether it is Friday or Tuesday, lines are forming outside the red door more and more often. The waiting room is almost always full, and the coffee thermos almost always in need of a refill.

In 2009, Hope House saw a 46% increase in clients. Hope House served 3,125 families (13,1333 individuals) in 2008. In 2009 we served 5,743 families (15,015 individuals). With this dramatic increase in clients, Hope House saw increases in all services provided.

Hope House gave out more of everything last year, including a 31% increase in hygiene items, a 26% increase in diapers, and an 18% increase in pounds of food provided to clients. As these numbers show, Hope House is finding and filling a niche, particularly with hygiene items and diapers. These items cannot be purchased with food stamps, are costly, are rarely available at reduced prices or free and are necessities. We are becoming one of the main emergency suppliers of hygiene items and diapers to all of Whatcom County.

Some clients are familiar faces at Hope House, who have been struggling for a while, and who need an occasional boost at the end of the month when funds are stretched. Some clients are new, from out of town or out of work. Some clients received help five or six years ago and have not needed Hope House again until now. In-take volunteers are digging up old records more often.

Hope House Street Outreach has witnessed a similar rise in need. In 2008, Hope House Street Outreach delivered an average of 40 to 50 lunches a week. In 2009, the average jumped to 65 lunches a week. Street Outreach vans are running out of sandwiches more quickly these days.

With Whatcom County unemployment at 8.1%, and having been over 7% since January of 2009, it is understandable that more people are in need of help. According to US Census estimates, over 15% of Whatcom County Residents live below the poverty line.

The good news is that donations are rising to meet the demand; miraculously, Hope House shelves remain stocked thanks to the generosity of our community. Volunteers worked 16% more hours in 2009 than in 2008.

Supported by volunteers and donations, Hope House is expanding to meet the rising need. We are now open on Wednesdays from 2 - 4:30. Hope House continues to rely heavily on donor support, receiving a large portion of its operating budget from generous donors. ♥

Bigger by Leaps in Faith

"I'm always a little nervous the Sunday I talk to the parish about the Christmas Program. It's a lot to ask."

Every year, in early October, Hope House Director Cheri Woolsey tries to figure out how many families Hope House can sponsor.

"It's always a step in faith. We have to sign up families before we ask to the parishioners to sponsor them, so it's kind of like committing people to something without asking them."

In 2008, Hope House sponsored over 50 families through the Christmas Program, but in 2009, with the economy stumbling along and the headlines saying 'unemployment rising', Christmas looked grim.

"I knew it was going to be a hard year, it would be a challenge to get 50 families sponsored, but as I was praying about it, I just kept hearing a little voice asking, 'How big is your faith?'"

How big is Hope House faith? 60 families? Nope. 75 families? It's bigger than that. 90 families? Bigger still. In 2009, Hope House accepted 116 families through the Christmas Program.

So when Cheri got up to speak to the parish, she knew she was asking for a lot. She was asking parishioners to provide two gifts and a stocking per child and one gift for each parent as a minimum. You can understand that she was nervous.

Of course there was nothing to worry about. Assumption Parish sponsored almost all 116 families whole, which means individual families or groups in the parish took on the responsibility of giving Christmas to whole families in need. In addition, from tags put up on the Angel Tree in the gathering space during Advent, parishioners provided over 75 homeless with presents for Christmas.

However big Hope House faith is, it's clear that the faith of this community is even bigger. God is moving in the hearts of our community.

On behalf of the many families, the many little girls and boys, the many cold people for whom Christmas was going to look like just another rainy day, Hope House would like to thank all the generous donors who showed love to one another this Christmas. ♥

Our New Storage Shed

If you've ever been inside Hope House, you know that there's not a lot of room. Hope House really is a house: clients shop for baby clothes in what was the family room, volunteers hand out hygiene and food items from the kitchen, Emergency Assistance helps clients problem solve financial issues from what could have been a child's room, just to describe a few.

Hope House doesn't have a whole lot of storage space—in fact, all incoming donations are stored in a utility closet until volunteers sort them and put them out for clients. We like it this way. We believe that our donations are for our clients and keeping them in storage rarely achieves anything more than making donations smell musty.

But there comes a time in every organization when physical growth is a necessity. Serving over 12,000 clients a year, Hope House was in dire need of more space to store such vital necessities as diapers, canned foods, and hygiene items purchased in bulk. The Medina Foundations gift of a new, top-of-the-line, sturdy storage shed, came as a true God-send.

Already the storage shed sees as much use as anyone could expect of it. In November of 2009, the Assumption School Human Food Chain filled it to the brim with canned foods, and Praise 106.5's much-needed donation of diapers took up even the highest level of shelving. Although Praise's diapers were all given out within a few weeks, and Assumption School's food supplies are going quick, Hope House could not have accommodated these expanded projects if it were not for the vital space the storage shed provides.

It is practical gifts like the storage shed that are helping Hope House reach more and more members of the community with emergency basic needs services when they are most needed.
The Hope House thanks the Medina Foundation for the gift of realized potential. ♥