Welcome 2015

Our Brothers Keeper Shelter board members and staff welcome 2015 knowing it will be filled with success and challenge. We have housed nearly 100 people so far this season and are grateful at seeing families reunited, housing and employment secured, and a warm and supportive community created. 

We are soon saying goodbye to our in-house chef as she moves into her new place. Our pantries and freezers are full due to the generosity of our community. We hope someone will step forward to coordinate meals and teach cooking skills. Mealtime is certainly one of the friendliest times at the shelter!

Some of the guests who have found housing are now lonely and missing the shelter community. If we had mentors to provide continued support for these folks, their transition would be much easier. We welcome volunteers who could provide this support and those who would be willing to become a payee to insure the bills stay paid and housing is secured.

Our Volunteer Director, Michelle Richardson, has trained over 100 volunteers this year! Yet we still struggle to fill our shifts. Volunteering at OBK is a calling and provides volunteers with wonderful relationships, exposures to a diverse community, and a brand new perspective of homelessness. We provide shadowing and back up support and hope we have made the volunteering experience as fulfilling as possible!

This year, with the help of foundation grants, we look forward to hiring a second part time employee. We are challenged to find housing for our guests who have poor rental history and need another chance. We dream of having our shelter community carried into a long term housing option where people are housed, supported, and integrated into their new community!

We give many thanks to all the of private donors, contributors to our fundraisers, and, most of all, our wonderful VOLUNTEERS!! Hopefully 2015 will bring continued generosity of time, talents and financial contributions to keep the people who need us have safety, hope and success!