Tackling Homelessness with Effective Strategies and Community Involvement

hi jillian how are you good how are you doing i'm doing good okay um so what are you doing for work so right now i work for a homeless resource center in santa clara county i'm a community engagement coordinator basically what that means is i connect resources from our community and direct them towards our clients and i also manage our in-kind donations and help distribute them among our clients and programs and i work with volunteers as well to help develop new programs or develop new workshops to benefit our clients okay and uh why did you choose to work there i saw that there was a homeless crisis in santa clara county uh i used to live in reno and i used to work for another homeless resource center there and when i moved back to the bay area i saw that santa clara county had a lot worse than reno did um and i wanted to be a part of the change with us so i worked with uh red cross initially and i noticed that one of the things that we one of the agencies that we worked with was home first and while i was working with them i found out that home first was one of the bigger resource centers in santa clara county okay and so when i applied for the job i wanted to be a part of something bigger so nice okay so um first uh what is your advice for someone who doesn't know where to start but wants to help the community i suggest uh looking at what non-profits and what other agencies are in your county uh or in your area um and see what their biggest needs are most of the time it's donations uh and especially during covid that's usually what's what they're looking for it's just um but make sure you donate something that is needed so contact whoever is in charge of donations in that agency and work with them to find something that they need um honestly if we donate more things it allows for more capacity to work on other programs that are needed the more donations that we get the easier it is for us to focus on other programs and help our homeless clients get that hundreds okay thank you