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Hospitality House of Western Nevada County A Community Shelter for the Homeless |
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| The mission of Hospitality House is to provide the homeless with a compassionate place of rest, sustenance, dignity, and hope. | ||
| Who We Are | Our Guests | Welcome Center | Volunteers | Wish List | Thank You | ||
Please CONTRIBUTE
Be part of our community effort and give generously so we can continue our services throughout this winter! You can write a check
and send it at our address below, or click on the PayPal button to have your debit or credit card charged. Where will my money go?
Gift Cards for donations in your name to friends are now available at the Hospitality House shelter. Make checks payable to:
All contributions are tax-deductible.
Hospitality House is a nonprofit public benefit corporation organized for the specific purpose of providing assistance to the homeless. Hospitality House is exempt from Federal income tax under section 501 (c) (3) of the Internal Revenue Code and exempt from state franchise or income tax under code section 23701d of the California Revenue and Taxation Code. |
IMPORTANT MESSAGE!
Hospitality House summer hours begin on Monday, May 11, 2009 Besides money there are other, small times you can donate. Some of which are needed desperately. NEWS
Indian Springs Vineyards' annual
This year's ticket will include a light summer supper, dessert, coffee, and a complimentary glass of Indian Springs wine.
For more information, please call Indian Springs Vineyards at 800-375-9311.
Annual End of Season Supper
Guests, volunteers, and friends of Hospitality House enjoyed a terrific end-of-season party at Sierra Presbyterian Church on Thursday evening, April 30th. Our closing-night get-together is always bittersweet, but this year a more festive mood prevailed because we had decided to stay open for a few more nights due to a rainstorm.
We send out a deeply heartfelt thank you to all the many people who participated with Hospitality House this season. Our staff, headed by the saintly Cindy Maple, is nothing short of heroic. Hundreds of volunteers working in all kinds of capacities make it possible for Hospitality House to operate, and, on behalf of the guests, staff, and board of directors, we thank them from our hearts. NEWS! LINKS!
Poet Molly Fisk's essay on the homeless originally broadast on KVMR-FM, Nevada City, CA I've been thinking about the last time I slept in a tent. It was in 1987 when I went camping with my friend Peggy. I've known her since high school - I'm the one with sassy things to say and she's the athlete. We've been back-packing together for years. Our only problems on that trip were a lot of flies at one campsite, so we couldn't sleep, and several enraged deer at another who for some reason decided to attack the clothes we'd left drying on a fallen tree, rending holes in everything. I remember having a great time, and also being happy to return to civilization, take a shower and hop on a plane back to my cosy apartment in Cambridge. I think of this because today is the last day our homeless shelter, Hospitality House, will be open until next fall. Quite a few people are newly homeless this year and have never slept outside before, except, maybe, when they went camping. A lot of them are scared. It's one thing to decide to tromp off into the woods for ten days with your best friend, and another to have nowhere else to go. Around here, we live in terrain alongside coyotes, bears, bobcats, raccoons, squirrels, and the occasional mountain lion, so food storage and personal safety are issues. We also get regular forest fires. If I were homeless, I'd be scared too. I feel awful about people having no place to live. My first impulse is to rent portapotties and set up tents in my yard. At the same time, I'm not the most financially secure person you ever met - self-employed poets rarely are - and I wonder how far away I am from living in a tent myself? So what to do, what to do? Lots of people are doing something, but so far it's a seasonal venture. Hospitality House, through 20 generous local faith communities who donate space in rotation, has a place for their homeless guests to sleep every night and eat a hot dinner from October through April. During the day, people can have lunch and baked goods donated by volunteers and area restaurants, wash their clothes, take showers, and receive compassionate human contact at the main office. The day-time offerings will continue through the year, but starting May 1st people are on their own at night. One thing I could do is donate a little money. A little is all I have, but the organization's annual budget of over two-hundred thousand dollars is almost entirely gathered from small donors like me. If enough of us gave a little, the facilities could stay open all year. Or maybe right now they need soap - I could find out and drive some over. I could make lunches or take bottled water to the camp sites this summer. We could all so easily become homeless. It takes one house-fire, one lay-off, one big medical bill. I think a way to express thanks for my own roof and to make losing a home less frightening is to help the people it's already happened to. Another thing you could try - I'm going to - is to spend a couple of nights outside in a tent this year, camping.
David Letterman ... Joan Rivers ... Jim Carey ... homeless ? Check out other famous people who have experienced homelessness at some point in their life. For more articles in The Union about Hospitality House, click here. PERPETUAL PROCEEDS FROM SALES OF CrochetMemories.com has recently added a new and original crochet design to their website that will benefit Hospitality House. Copies of the pattern, entitled "Praying Hands," are for sale at CrochetMemories.com. Quarterly, the Hospitality House will receive 75% of the gross sales income. The remaining 25% is kept by the website provider to cover their expenses. The piece was designed by our own Nevada County Treasurer & Tax Collector, E. Christina Dabis. Thank you Chris for your thoughtfulness and your lovely crochet work. EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR'S REPORT The Hospitality House Board of Directors and Staff opened our fourth shelter season on Monday October 13. Following is a report as of February, 2008. As of Jan. 1 2008 we have served 20 children and 67 woman. We had 4000 bed nights with 25 to 39 people per night last season. Last shelter season (Oct. 15-Apr 30 2008) we served 28 Veterans (20% of our total guests served for the season). We provided 890 Shelter nights and three meals per day for these veterans-market value $89,000.Referrals Made: We expect to make 30 referrals per week or approximately 1560 during the year. You might ask why do we keep statistics and make estimates of program participants? The answer is relatively simple – numbers prove need in a concrete way. They also tell our supporters that we are serious about sheltering our community’s homeless. Finally they tell the entire community how much effort it takes to make Hospitality House a reality.
If you want to make a difference in our community this winter – please consider volunteering with Hospitality House. Leave a voicemail and call back number at 271-7144 stating that you wish to attend the next volunteer training session. To make a financial donation please mail a check to Hospitality House, P.O. Box3223, Grass Valley, CA 95945. Check out here illustrated story of our first year. Photos,
anecdotes, portraits ... people coming together in a true community spirit.
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