The Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless

These are your neighbors. And they need your help.

News/Events

Help with After School Snacks!

As our new children’s program gets underway in January, we are hoping to be able to offer the children a healthy snack after school. We would like to give them a nutritious snack to boost their energy and promote a healthy learning environment.

Ideally, volunteer groups would sign-up to sponsor snack-time once per week, or once per month, or whenever you are able.

Here is a list of items we would like to serve:

• Apples
• Bananas
• Grapes
• Carrots
• Granola Bars
• Goldfish crackers
• Raisins
• Peanut butter crackers
• Low salt/low butter popcorn
• 100% Juice, Juice Boxes
• Small bottled waters
• Pretzels

• Gift cards (Harris Teeter, Giant, Shoppers, Safeway, Whole Foods)

Gift cards are for purchasing the perishable items ourselves. Items that are individually packaged are the best for our situations as we have a limited space to distribute the snacks. We also hope to keep the clean-up to a minimum.

PLEASE DO NOT BRING ITEMS TO AACH WITHOUT CONTACTING WITH US FIRST – we have limited storage and hope to keep this program well-organized. To sponsor a snack-time for the children of AACH, please contact Katie Tressel, Volunteer & Community Outreach Coordinator at 703.525.7177 ext.23 or ktressel@aachhomeless.org.

Ways To Help this Holiday Season

If you’d like to help the families of Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless this holiday season, please consider donating grocery, Target, or Walmart gift cards. We use gift cards to assist our clients throughout the year!

Help us keep our doors open! Please give financial donations online through “Network for Good”

You can also send donations to:

Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless
c/o Michael O’Rourke
3103 9th Road North
Arlington, VA 22201

Holiday Hook-up 2009

During the holiday season, Arlington-Alexandria Coalition for the Homeless recruits volunteers to assist with our Holiday Hook-up campaign. We ask that volunteers help purchase gifts for a homeless or formerly homeless family. This is an enormous help to our clients who are not able to purchase gifts for their children. Additionally, this enables our clients to save more money to put towards housing, school and other important needs.

Thanks to our wonderful volunteers, all of our families have been matched for the 2009 Holiday Season. Thank you for helping to make the holidays joyous for families struggling to regain and maintain their independence.

For more information, please contact Katie Tressel, Volunteer & Community Outreach Coordinator at ktressel@aachhomeless.org.

Announcing the AACH Micro Business Enterprise Program

We all know that times are tough, but the situation is especially difficult for some of the families we serve – the working poor who struggle from pay check to paycheck trying to make ends meet. Earning less than $15.00 an hour, a single mom with 2 children can’t come close to earning a living wage in northern Virginia. In order to help our families achieve greater levels of self-sufficiency and enter mainstream society, AACH, with generous support from the Boeing Corporation, has launched a new initiative designed to assist participants launch micro-businesses to supplement their household incomes.

Modeled on successful international efforts, the Micro Business Enterprise Initiative currently involves a group of 15-20 families. For starters, the group is going through a rigorous business training program designed to cultivate personal, financial, and entrepreneurial capacities as well as helping them develop sound business plan. Each participant is matched with volunteers, mentors, and advisors who have experience in their particular business areas and AACH provides further training and support along the way. A financial lending club is also being organized, where participating families will share responsibility for approving, managing, and distributing small microloans that will be used to startup micro-businesses by other club members.

If you are an organization or individual interested in partnering with AACH on this initiative, please contact our Volunteer Coordinator Katie Tressel at ktressel@aachhomeless.org.

Volunteers Needed

As the economy regresses, the demand for volunteer support increases drastically at AACH. Volunteers are a vital part of the inner workings that make AACH such a success in the fight to against homelessness. There are many different volunteer opportunities; from services projects to donations, mentoring and training sessions. For more information on how you can get involved, please see our Volunteer Page.

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