RESTORATIVE COMMUNITY Program
Resources, employment, personal growth: The interdependent gears that drive the vision.
How do you tackle the complex problems of homelessness, addiction, trauma and mental-health struggles? There are a lot of different moving parts to that question, and one approach is to let some of those moving parts drive each other.
Our partners at Dignity Health are helping us continue to develop a multi-tiered strategy around the concept of Restorative Community:
Food and Resource Services, meeting critical needs for nutrition, clothing, hygiene, laundry, and housing referral, through a variety of outlets. These basic services create relationships and open access pathways for:
Life-Skills Programming for those exiting homelessness, through our Thrive Lives program. Group support and one-on-one coaching address topics such as personal finances, time management, self-care, health and fitness, and more. Life-skills programming is also woven in as a part of:
Job-Skills Training through our JAM Academy, in which we hire individuals with lived homelessness experience and use their skills and knowledge to deliver the food and resource services, shape the life-skills programming, and bring perspective and ground-level ownership to future projects like the Recovery Cafe. JAM Academy employees meet weekly with mentors who work on personal goals, with the opportunity to move into peer mentorship roles themselves by the time they graduate Level 3.
Taken as a whole, the interdependent components of the Restorative Community model become replicable in a variety of contexts.
