I just received a note a couple days ago from Ashley Lawson over at Miriam’s Kitchen — an email sent to volunteers at their Washington, DC, soup kitchen for homeless men and women; however, there’s some good general information and interesting stuff for anyone who may be interested in the  current state of homelessness in DC, in America, and some examples of organizations and kitchens that are working every day to help — and the people, like me, who love them:

Guest Facts — So far this year (from January – May), volunteers  have helped to serve a total of 29,515 healthy, homemade meals to our guests.  We truly can’t thank you enough for your incredible donation of time and energy.  Each of you make a huge difference in the lives of our guests.

As you may know, many of our guests sleep on the streets every night and many are battling severe mental health problems.  The warm smiles and conversations you share with our guests are just as important to their survival as the nutritious meals you help to prepare.

In January, we administered a survey of our guests, and would like to share 3 facts with you:

• The average length of homelessness of our guests is 5.5 years
• The age groups of our guests: 18-29: 8%; 30-49: 39%; 50-61: 45%; 62+: 8%
• At the time of the survey, 25% of our guests slept on the street

If you would like a full review of the survey, you may view it here.

What Miriam’s Kitchen Needs — Interested in helping to serve our guests beyond your volunteer shift?  Please consider hosting a donation drive to benefit our guests!  Our top needs for the kitchen and our guests: ground coffee, small bottles of lotion, razors and deodorant.

Since I wanted to give you more context, I grabbed this from the Miriam’s Kitchen website, www.miriamskitchen.org:

How to Help and How to Volunteer –

We are volunteer-driven. Just ask our 1,200 volunteers! This amazing group of volunteers put in more than 12,500 hours of service for Miriam’s Kitchen in 2008–the equivalent of having six additional full-time staff members!

We are always open to ideas for ways that community members can get involved, but here are a few ways you can help:

• Help Serve Breakfast — Breakfast volunteers arrive at 6 am and spend the next two hours chopping vegetables, flipping pancakes, baking biscuits and washing dishes.
• Help Serve Lunch — Lunch volunteers join us on Wednesdays from 11:30 am-2 pm and help prepare lunch, serve drinks and distribute door prizes to our guests.
• Help Serve Dinner — Dinner volunteers are needed every week night from 4-6:30 pm to help prepare and serve healthy meals to our guests.
• Help Prepare Dinner — Volunteers are needed on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12-2 pm to help prepare recipes for our dinner service.
• Help Our Case Managers — Volunteers are needed to help sort clothes, hand out toiletries and interact with our guests every weekday morning and evening.
• Host a Clothing or Toiletry Drive — We rely on in-kind donations to provide our guests with clean clothing and new toiletries. Organizing a clothing or toiletry drive in your office, church, community center or neighborhood is an easy way to provide assistance to our guests. Please click here to our wish list.

Donate! — donate online!

• With a $25 donation, you will provide the food for a healthy, homemade breakfast for 25 homeless men and women.
• With a $50 donation, you will provide transportation to doctor appointments and job interviews to 40 homeless men and women.
• With a $100 donation, you will provide art supplies for our Miriam’s Studio’s Art Therapy class.
• With a $500 donation, you will provide one day of case management services to 80 of our guests.
• With a $1,000 donation, you will provide a healthy, homemade meal (breakfast or dinner) to all of our guests for one day!
• With a $2,500 donation, you will provide healthy meals and comprehensive case management services to all of our guests for one morning!
• With a $12,500 donation, you will provide a week’s worth of meals and services to nearly 1,000 homeless men and women.

Donate online!