Mondloch House Fills Important Need in Our Community
Even With Your Busy Schedule - You Can Help!
Mondloch House is operated by New Hope Housing, a non-profit organization dedicated to providing housing and a gateway to a better life for homeless families and individuals. Mondloch House is a 45-bed shelter for homeless families. On average, half of Mondloch House’s residents are homeless children.
Families are referred to the shelter by Fairfax County’s Department of Family Services, and usually spend about eight to nine months at Mondloch House. While there, New Hope Housing offers them not only food and shelter, but also helps to develop the life skills needed for successful independent living by offering counseling, teaching employment skills, providing an employment resource center, offering health services and transportation assistance, and providing educational enrichment and recreational activities for the children and their parents.
For more than a decade now, Aldersgate volunteers have supported the important work of Mondloch House by providing fresh fruits and vegetables on a weekly basis to help feed the families residing at Mondloch House. The time and financial commitment for volunteers is minimal, but the reward is great.
NEW INFORMATION - SEPTEMBER 2011
Attention Mondloch House Volunteers: My deepest thanks to the many of you who have contributed so faithfully to purchasing and delivering fresh fruits and vegetables to Mondloch’s family shelter each week. This is a vital ministry that ensures those homeless families –and especially the children – are getting the fresh produce that is so essential to good nutrition.
Mondloch’s family shelter will be closing the end of October 2011. At that point, the families will be transitioned into independent living apartments. But Mondloch still needs your fresh produce so please continue to sign up in the foyer and volunteer to purchase the produce on weeks convenient for you.
Starting in November, the produce that you deliver will be used to prepare food baskets for those families to ensure that the children’s nutritional needs are being met in transitional housing. In addition, our produce will be used to feed those homeless adults living in Mondloch Shelter #1 (right across the street from the family shelter) and at the Eleanor Kennedy Shelter on Route One. The need for healthy food thus remains – we will just be serving a wider homeless population.
Please let me know if you have any questions about this transition, and thank you again for your faithful service and generosity.
Patricia Millett, 703-799-5814, kingmillett@verizon.net
For more information about Mondloch House, please visit the New Hope Housing website at http://www.newhopehousing.org.