With over 7,400 volunteer hours and $7,963,163 donated dollars, you’ve helped Bread for the City provide food, clothing, medical and dental care, legal assistance, and social services to more than 33,000 people this year.
Incredible!
Here’s the breakdown:
HUNGER
You fed 24,915 people this year!
For forty years, our food pantry has served our city’s most vulnerable residents — senior citizens, people with disabilities, and families with children. We just didn’t have the capacity to feed everyone, so we focused our resources on what we believed to be the greatest need.
But times have changed, and more people need our help. Because of your incredible support, we expanded our food program this year! You helped us lift the final restriction on our food pantry to feed our city’s working poor and unemployed adults. Plus, our newest urban agriculture, City Orchard, celebrated its first full growing season by providing our clients with over 14,000 lbs. of fruit and vegetable bounty. Thank you for joining us in the fight against hunger!
HOMELESSNESS
You helped 296 people keep their homes!
With your support, our housing case managers and lawyers have been able to connect our city’s low-income residents with affordable housing, and help them keep their homes.
Around 7,750 people in DC are experiencing homelessness right now, and affordable housing has dwindled by more than half over the last decade. This year, our Housing Access Program saw around 40 people each week, who came to us for help identifying and applying for affordable units in buildings across the city. Housing is a fundamental part of creating stable families – thank you for working with us to address this inequity in our city.
HEALTHCARE INEQUITY
You ensured access to healthcare for 2,886 people!
In the spring, we became a Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Look-Alike! This will allow us to expand our coverage of DC’s medically-vulnerable through increased patient reimbursements for our patients on public insurance plans.
We’ve already hired new providers and implemented services like behavioral health. With your support and with new funding streams like FQHC, we are able to sustainably support our growing clinic.
THE POVERTY TRAP
You helped our social workers provide compassionate care and resources through over 9,700 client visits.
With your help, Bread for the City social workers enabled clients to access public benefits, receive referrals to complementary service organizations, and aided them in addressing long-term problems like lack of affordable housing, unemployment, and substance abuse.
AND JUST PLAIN BAD LUCK
You provided 5,142 people with public benefits, eviction prevention, and safety from domestic violence.
Your support means that BFC clients with substandard housing can find clean, safe homes. It means that your neighbors’ involved in a custody dispute can resolve their problems so that their children receive the financial and emotional support to which they are entitled. And it’s no exaggeration to say that you helped save lives through our Domestic Violence Community Legal Services Project. Thank you!
Still, 108,732 people are living in poverty here in DC. People like Kiara, who came to Bread for the City as a homeless mother in search of housing, employment, and food for her two-year old son. “Some days I felt like I didn’t have a place in the world because I didn’t have a job or a place to live,” says Kiara.
With your help, our newly expanded Food Program ensured that Kiara and her son had enough to eat. Our caseworkers secured transitional housing for the young family. And our Pre-Employment Program prepared Kiara to join the workforce.
It paid off. Within weeks, Kiara secured an internship with the DC government and enrolled in her first semester of college. Today, Kiara and her son are thriving.
Bread for the City spent 2014 helping thousands of DC residents, just like Kiara, find stability. We couldn’t have done it without your support.
Thank you, and we’ll see you in 2015!