Shelter Donations Meet Our Founder About us | Shelter Donations Meet Our Founder About us |
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Before DWC opened their doors in 1978, Skid Row and its surrounding streets provided shelters, pantries and social services accessible only to men. The DWC provides homeless women with both permanent and temporary housing, and a wide array of resources in order to empower each individual woman via access to supportive services and a safe community that can enhance her safety and well-being. For more information, please visit their web site: http://www.dwcweb.org Step Up On Second Step Up is dedicated to long-term support of people with severe and persistent mental illness in recovery and their families, offering quality housing, educational, social and work experiences. For more information, please visit their web site: http://www.stepuponsecond.org/index.cfm Sojourn Services for Battered Women and their children, located in Santa Monica, CA. works towards empowering women and children to regain their dignity and make choices to stop the cycle of violence in their families. For more information, please visit their web site: www.opcc.net/sojourn Violence Intervention Program (VIP)Violence Intervention Program's mission is simple and yet crucial: Intervening to protect and treat all victims of violence. The center provides medical, forensic, mental health, social and legal services for all victims of violence, regardless of gender or age. Although children continue to be the focus of VIP, clients include all victims of interpersonal and family violence. For more information, please visit their web site: www.violenceinterventionprogram.org
In the first year, UnderShare dropped off car loads of new underwear and socks to the National Guard Armory in Gilroy, California, as well as donated new undergarments to a homeless hotel in Hollywood that charged $2.25 per night. We brought donations to the Salvation Army in Santa Monica, and to the Weingart Center and the L.A. Mission on Skid Row. As we at UnderShare continued our volunteer work, fundraising and operating on a shoe string budget to give new underwear to a variety of homeless shelters, we heard petitions on the behalf of abused women in relocation programs. They need everything to start rebuilding their lives - including a bra that fits them. In response, we hosted our first "bra drive" using a list of the exact sizes of every woman in the shelter. In later years, we at UnderShare learned about the realities of homeless children. Our President, Faith Heidtke, heard from a shelter that the volunteers and staff had no way to potty train the toddlers without pull-ups, which the shelter couldn't afford. We began to organize diaper drives. Here's an excerpt from How We Find Hope. It's from speech given by Jane Alexander on October 26, 2001 in Boston to benefit The Women's Lunch Place, which was created to provide a safe, comfortable daytime refuge, nutritious food, and basic resources for women and children who are homeless and poor: "The Women's Lunch Place tries to provide clean clothing, showers, and laundry for its guests-resources for restoring their dignity. In Jocelyn's story, we see the meanness and humiliation of poverty. On this particular day, Jocelyn was working in the dining room. She met a woman named Shauna who needed many things-first soap, shampoo and towels to take a shower. Then Shauna came to the clothing room. "I really need some underwear. Do you have any?" Jocelyn looked in the donation underwear box and groaned in discouragement as she saw just two small, threadbare panties. She was embarrassed to offer these to Shauna. "You aren't gonna want what we've got. But we give out brand new underwear and bras later this month," she said encouragingly. Shauna said, "Well, I need them." She took the largest and most tattered of the two pairs and thanked her."
With our donations, UnderShare tries to help clients recover a sense of personal dignity, maybe a sense of regained privacy or protection. We believe it is a way to make a five dollar contribution meaningful. We now also donate to rape crisis support programs. In such programs, trained volunteers are advocates for rape victims at hospitals, and if needed, provide rape victims with new replacement undergarments. A freelance photographer, who took pictures of celebrities at events for fashion magazines, once told me he thought UnderShare was trite. In the scheme of things, I disagree. Although there are far greater endeavors, there is nothing about kindness given to people in cruel circumstances that is trite.
Colleen Bingham Jared Halstein Jamie Klausner Faith Mellinger Marianne Rubino Kevin Walsh |
When UnderShare was founded, I envisioned a charity that would make an impact even with the smallest of donations. I knew that UnderShare needed to exist when I gave a package of men's briefs to a homeless man who was digging for food inside a dumpster. I had often spared change and food to people on the street but had never witnessed such heartfelt gratitude.