Reunited and it feels so good!
Wednesday night saw our return to offering laundry in Oregon City and we are extra excited and thankful for a few reasons:
Brad and Max, the owners of Brax Laundry, are amazing humans with genuine hearts for helping us serve our community.
This is our first event with on-site bathrooms available. The shock on people’s faces when we told them they could go right inside and use the “real” bathrooms is worth noting. DIGNITY MATTERS.
We are able to offer showers and on site. This means folks can shower and wash their clothes at the same time - a first for us! One individual who showered on Sunday hadn’t had clean clothes and a shower in two months.
Wrap around supports like an on-site outreach team, a case manager from Veterans Village, our Clackmas County Veteran Outreach Specialist, a Providence BOB Outreach Specialist, and more were available to connect with neighbors and make magic happen.
Clackamas County DA’s office provided an incredible number of volunteers to help with showers, laundry and hygiene supplies. A special thank you to Community Prosecutor and Clackamas Rotarian Bill Stewart for sharing about LoveOne and coordinating said volunteers.
Thank you to Dan Mills and Grocery Outlet for providing water, toilet paper and volunteer hours.
When a volunteer found out that it was a neighbor’s birthday and they didn’t have anyone to celebrate with, the volunteer went over to Grocery Outlet and purchased several boxes of mochi ice cream. Everyone sang and enjoyed ice cream.
This first event was word of mouth only while we figured out how services would flow, and we still provided laundry to 23 people, hygiene supplies to 39, and showers to 6.
What a fantastic night!