Monday Night Mission

We're blessed to be able to offer this service and the only reason we can is because a lot of you volunteered at Monday Night Mission and made The Shower of Hope possible and still help to keep it going. So if you ever volunteered at Monday Night Mission or volunteered with The Shower of Hope, this is thanks to you!

The Shower of Hope, the continuation of Monday Night Mission was featured by Kelly Clarkson on The Kelly Clarkson Show. See what we have achieved from the work we started on Skid row. https://fb.watch/31E7sYFwlA/

Happy Birthday Smalls! Monday Night Mission volunteer Smalls is doing the #SixforSixLA Challenge to help The Shower of Hope house 6 female community college students experiencing homelessness through our new program Hope Housing for Students. Do 6 push up or squats and nominate 6 people to do the challenge!... SixforSixLA.org https://www.facebook.com/smalls.wholovesme/videos/1036351443533793/

Kristine Mirelle doing the #SixforSixLA after knee surgery. Listen to why she's still willing to do 6 push ups! #SixforSix https://www.facebook.com/520132348/posts/10158795994822349/

How will 2021 be? Today a guest at The Shower of Hope asked for us to take his picture after he took his shower. If you've ever wondered if the time you spent volunteering with us makes a difference, here it is!

Just a simple change in the date won't make next year any better but a small donation can give the chance for 6 young unhoused women going to community college have a safe place to live. If you can, please donate! #Hope

"As some of you already know, 3 weeks ago we lost our host location for Monday Night Mission, the Burger King on Grand & since then we have not served our usual 5 nights a week on Skid row. 7 years ago I started MNM as a way to address the need of food. The photo below was taken in 2011 when we were the only group serving at night during the week. (The line for food starts where I am standing and try to guess where it ends). A typical night for us would mean serving 250 people while at the last week of the month, with little to no food stamps left on Skid row, we were easily feeding over 350 people a night...."

"Why am I sitting in my fish bowl when everyone else is suffering and I can do something. People always talk about doing things but don't. Or doing things when they make a lot of money. You can do things before making money. You can always help people!"

Maria Every Monday morning The Shower of Hope is at St. Margaret's Center in Inglewood. One thing our unhoused guests who come for showers always need is haircuts. Today and for months before Maria Porter, a retired hairdresser has been here giving haircuts to our guests. Today I got the chance to meet Maria who was being helped by Ray Miller. Maria told me she was going to be at our 54th St Adventist church location tomorrow and asked where else she could help. She told me: ...I'm retired, I'm 65 and I have the time. It's inspiring that even during the time of Covid Maria is willing to don a mask and keep helping our unhoused Angelenos. A haircut is no big deal for us. We have the money to go to a salon or just use an electric trimmer but when you're on the street you don't have a mirror let alone a place to plug in a trimmer. When it comes to helping the unhoused one of the best things we can do is to show them how beautiful they are. When everyone looks down on you, the ability to look in the mirror and feel beautiful or just simply good about yourself is priceless. Thank you Maria for giving our guests Hope! #Hope

The work of the #SheDoes Movement, the work of hundreds of Angelenos went largely unthanked until the 24th of last month when Councilmember Herb J. Wesson, Jr. who fiercely fought for Bridge Housing named a 15 bed transitional shelter for women located on his district office grounds after #SheDoes. Not only did the Councilmember embrace #SheDoes, the importance of safeguarding our unsheltered mothers and sisters on the street, he acknowledged hundreds of Angelenos who put in ...hard work to bring attention to our unhoused women in Los Angeles. To all those who supported the #SheDoes Movement, all Bridge Homes not just this shelter is only possible thanks to your dedication, commitment, compassion and courage. I hope you find comfort in the fact of not only what was accomplished but knowing that in this very shelter, a mother and daughter who were homeless together for years sleep tonight with Shelter and Protection! #SheDoes

The Shower of Hope Volunteer Emma Zander raised funds to get Keith, one of our Safe Parking guests a car after his car broke down. This is #Hope

Hope Housing for Students The Shower of Hope 's new program Hope Housing for Students first 2 student participants moved in this Sunday, September 13th. We still have openings left for male students attending East Los Angeles Community College experiencing housing insecurity (living on the sreet, in a car, couch surfing, shelter or in an unsafe/unstable environment). #Hope

"See, I've been on that sidewalk. It was a long time ago but I was. The thing with a shower is when you take one after while and get that clean feeling, when you get used to getting clean, then you get tired of going back to dirty. That's when people look at ways of how to stay clean and leave the sidewalk. Thank you for what you guys do!"

The Shower of Hope needs Your Help! As you might know we are launching a housing program for ELAC community college students facing housing instability. We still have beds open but are struggling to get the message out to students experiencing homelessness. If you know anyone attending ELAC facing housing instability please forward this flyer and link to them. There is a $250 rent requirement starting the 2nd month but for students who are unable to pay, they can still stay i...n the program by committing to volunteer 15 hours a week. Food, Hi-speed internet, laundry, clothing, furniture and counseling will be provided through the program. #Hope Link to apply: https://tinyurl.com/HopeHousing-ELAC or email: [email protected] www.theshowerofhope.org

Are you an ELAC Student Experiencing Homelessness? Hope Housing for Students is a Transitional Housing program for male ELAC students experiencing homelessness starting September 2020. Run by the same organization behind The Shower of Hope, we are opening a shared housing project in Rosemead to provide a safe, comfortable living environment for ELAC students experiencing housing instability. If you or someone you know might benefit from this program, please follow the link b...elow or email [email protected] #Hope There is a $250 rent requirement each month starting the 2nd month. If you are unable to pay you can still be a part of this program by volunteering 15 hours a week. Link to apply for our student housing program: https://tinyurl.com/HopeHousing-ELAC www.theshowerofhope.org

The Shower of Hope - Our Secret! People always ask in disbelief how The Shower of Hope grew so fast. People keep asking what's our secret. We're just over 3 years old and in that time we went from operating one mobile shower trailer to operating 9 mobile shower trailers in 24 locations, 2 Safe Parking Programs, the Hope Navigation Center, a mobile shower operation in Bakersfield and our brand new program "Hope Housing for Students" through which we will house unhoused communi...ty college students. This is our secret: It was 85 degrees today when Angie Bravo, Vanessa Torres, Brian Scott Taubman and Gloria García started volunteering to wash towels. They just finished washing hundreds of towels which will be used by hundreds of our homeless Angelenos taking showers in our trailers this week. These 4 didn't start volunteering today. They like some of the hundreds of our volunteers have been volunteering for years. Some even before The Shower of Hope when we used to serve meals on Skid row through Monday Night Mission. When we use the hash tag #Hope it isn't just to recognize our non-profit. We use #Hope because our volunteers keep pushing us to do more. Because #Hope is not just a movement restricted to showers or a service. #Hope is a movement that will serve our Angelenos in any way they need help through our very own Angelenos themselves. #Hope is not just the dream of a better tomorrow, #Hope is Angelenos fighting for a better tomorrow. Thank you for your years of service to bring us to where we are today! Mel

The Shower of Hope - A $5 donation makes a world of difference! These past 5 months have been extremely challenging. With the arrival of Covid-19 in LA county, it's cities deemed showers for the homeless critical towards helping them avoid the virus and staying safe. We were at 14 locations before Covid and and we kept getting calls to start new sites. From the City of Pasadena to Glendale to Palmdale and the list goes on. At a point when our survival as a non-profit was at s...take our on-site teams really stepped up. We added 10 new locations on top of adding additional service days at existing locations. Working in 90 degree weather is hard work on top of the threat of Covid-19. If you want to see the dedication of our team members and volunteers, just drop in for 15 minutes one day and see the compassion with which they treat our unhoused neighbors to how grateful our neighbors are for receiving that simple shower. In the end it's not the showers we give, it's the love our team members shower our unhoused Angelenos with. It's from remembering their names, to asking them how they feel, to telling them things will be okay to just sometimes simply listening to them vent. We currently operate 4 of our own mobile shower trailers on top of 4 trailers that have been given to us by the county of LA and another non profit to use. This month we just received our 5th mobile shower trailer giving us a chance to expand to at least 5 more locations. This is thanks to all our donors and oir supporters who keep promoting us on social media. We will also be using these funds to our The Shower of Hope Bakersfield project we started on 08.19.2020 and Hope Housing for Students, a housing program for homeless community college students we will be starting in September. Any amount counts no matter how small! Thank you, Mel The Shower of Hope is registered with the IRS under "End Homelessness California" and is designated by the IRS as a 501c3 non-profit organization. All donations are tax deductible. www.theshowerofhope.org

The Shower of Hope Bakersfield Today The Shower of Hope started it's first operation outside of LA County. The Shower of Hope Bakersfield is a joint partnership between Adventist Health, The Resurrection Church of Bakersfield, Riverview Assembly of GodChurch, CityServe and Flood Ministries. Together we launched a Community Hub around mobile showers in Oildale, a suburb in need in Bakersfield. The project is to bring showers, meals, services and other resources to the homeless who live on the Kern riverbed.

Jason Working in homelessness is brutal. You meet people in the most in desperate situations. People who need help when the reality is there's very little to go around. Worse is when you build a relationship with your client and start to like them. Just when you think things can't get worse, you hear worse news. Jason is one of those clients. Living in his SUV he was a regular at The Shower of Hope. Every day he would come up and say hello. Every single time he would have som...ething nice to say about how grateful he was for the showers, the meals or something. I remember one day he had come in late. We were done and leaving but that didn't stop him from saying Thank you. He's a hard person not to like and he's a favorite to everyone on our team. Then came the bad news. 2 weeks ago he came up to talk. He didn't look well and I asked him why. "They found a tumor in my lung. They did a biopsy. They are checking to see if it's cancer." It felt like a punch in the gut. Just the way he looked. The color drained from his face, the bags under his eyes and the look of pain. You didn't have to be a doctor to know that this wasn't "just" a tumor. He was sick and this was cancer. This within weeks of LA county closing entrance to Project Roomkey. A program where they placed the most vulnerable homeless Angelenos in hotels. We reached out to every agency possible. No luck, no programs and nothing for a 65 year old about to go through chemotherapy in his car. Nothing but desperation. Then I called the one person who I knew would and could do something. I've known Jose Rodriguez for 2 years. A Deputy District Director for Councilmember Gilbert Cedillo, we work together to bring showers to LA's 1st district. When we talk about obstacles to solving homelessness, one of our biggest setbacks is our bureaucrats. Most call homelessness a crisis but still respond like it's a 9 to 5 job. Jose's different. He's a gem among them. Time and time again he's helped us help our clients when there was nothing else. With no other option left I called Jose. He simply said he would get Jason into a program and got to work. We touched base for a week. Then after 10 days I called him again and he was surprised: "What??? He's still not in??? Hold on. Let me try a different approach! We're going to get him in!" Fast forward 4 days later to today. This is Jason in front of the hotel that will be his home for a while where he will have a safe, comfortable hotel room with a queen bed, air conditioning, 3 meals a day and where there will be a plan to get him into permanent supportive housing. And in the bottom right photo is Jose on the left doing what he does best. Getting the damn job done! Thank you Jose! #Hope

Only YOU can help our Unhoused Angelenos! It's 100 in LA right now. With over 66,000 people experiencing homelessness in LA County, all the non-profit and government agencies put together still can't reach every Angeleno who's sleeping on the street. With cafes and libraries being closed, there's no place to go for shade. Please consider carrying cold bottles of water with you and in your car and hand it to the homeless Angelenos you see in your neighborhood and when going about your day. Many homeless Angelenos die of heatstroke every year. You just might save a life! If you come across an individual lying unresponsive on the street PLEASE CALL 911 and ask for paramedics to respond!