Anything Helps

Support houseless people in Seattle by making a Giving Tuesday donation ---> https://givebutter.com/uPFIVm

Tomorrow is Giving Tuesday! We are launching a campaign to raise $1,000 to support Seattle's houseless. Can you make a $5 donation? --->

Anything Helps Giving Tuesday Support Seattle's Houseless Community

When Anything Helps met Shelly Vaughn, she was living in an encampment in North Seattle. Her natural leadership and her desire to care for her community were obvious, so we empowered her to do exactly that.

We ensured her voice was included in all decisions involving the future of the camp and its residents. When the City of Seattle Government began referring people to shelters, she became the site's liaison — any referrals went through her first.

The result? She held the City accountable, forcing them to make offers to every resident of the encampment that she knew they would accept. For the first time in City history, an entire encampment - over 50 people - had moved inside, and the only thing left to sweep on the day of the cleanup was what should have been swept—trash.

Shelly was also our first paid staff member. We trained her to work in the field, provide quality care and how to protect herself from vicarious trauma. It hasn't always been perfect, and we haven't always seen eye-to-eye, but we have always believed in her ability to do great things for the people she cares about.

Today, that belief paid dividends as she assisted one of her clients with signing a lease for the first time.

As someone who has experienced homelessness myself, I can't tell you how emotional it is to see one of our former clients house someone else. It is such a surreal moment, and an accomplishment that Shelly and our team should feel incredibly proud of.

Keep up the great work, Shelly. We love you, and we will never stop believing in you.

Just wanted to thank all of our donors for contributing to our campaign this year - despite us being too occupied with growing pains to do any marketing or engagement with you at all. Really means a lot to us.

2023 was a year of resilience, growth, and significant development for me and Anything Helps. We've built a strong organizational foundation, ensuring we enter 2024 from safe and ethical footing .

One of the skills I've mastered this year is turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones. Anything Helps faced immense backlash from previous failures that never wavered our momentum. Our organization's integrity shined through in our community work, affording us opportunities to forgive and be forgiven, and to accept everyone, including ourselves, as the fallible human beings we all are. Adopting this perspective allowed us to continue forging forward despite the backlash, turning our adversaries into allies and advocates along the way.

2023 helped us accumulate the strength and partnerships we needed for the real work we are about to begin in 2024. This year we aim to put new ideas into motion and watch them turn into industry-wide best practices that will afford better opportunities for people experiencing homelessness to achieve stability.

We are prepared to fight the fiercest battles and resistant to conform to the industries expectations of us. We will stand by our guiding principles and model our values in everything we do. I will lead us into 2024 with integrity by speaking truth to power, modeling for others that adversity and transparency have the power to make us all stronger.

📣 Giving Tuesday is almost here! At Anything Helps, we value sharing how your generous donations make a tangible difference in people's lives. We believe in , which is why we ensure that 100% of all donations made on our Giving Tuesday page go directly to our clients.

Look at how Anything Helps spent a generous donation of $5000 last year:

1️⃣ We used $1775.97 to reunite four individuals and one couple with their families in their home states.

2️⃣ $1987.07 helped over 40 people secure their Washington state ID and 10 people secure state residency, prerequisites for housing and our mission to end .

3️⃣ $1236.96 was spent on a security deposit and prorated first month's rent for a client who had been living outside for over a decade.

Make a meaningful and tangible difference in someone's life this Giving Tuesday; Donate to Anything Helps using our Giving Tuesday link below, or share this post with your network!

Donate today! https://mtyc.co/d4df5f

Support Anything Helps on Washington Gives Hi, we're Anything Helps! 👋As experts in homeless outreach, housing navigation, and case management, we offer a more humane and permanent alternative to homeless sweeps.

We are thrilled to spotlight one of our dedicated volunteers, Shell Vaughn. Formerly a client of ours, Shelly is now stably housed and is channeling her sense of purpose into service for others. She has taken up the task of assisting individuals at a Ballard encampment in renewing or replacing their Washington State IDs.

She initiated a Go Fund Me campaign via our non-profit, Anything Helps, with an aim to cover the costs associated with her work. This initiative not only aids in her personal empowerment but also creates significant impact in the lives of others.

We kindly ask you to consider joining us in supporting her efforts by contributing through the link below:

Providing Homeless ID's & essentials, organized by Shelly Vaughn Hello and thank you for visiting our GoFundMe campaign! We are dedicated to making… Shelly Vaughn needs your support for Providing Homeless ID's & essentials

Learning from Failure: An Essential Guide for Nonprofits and Government Agencies Providing Homeless Services

www.linkedin.com

Another one of our clients is signing a lease today and she needs furniture to store her belongings like bookshelves or chests of drawers.

If you are in the Seattle area and are willing to donate furniture that serves this purpose, let me know. If it is under 6' x 4' it should fit in the back of my car and I can come pick it up today or over the weekend.

We will also be providing her with a target gift card to help her make the place feel like home. If you'd like to contribute to it, make a donation on our website and add the note WELCOMEHOMESEP1 at checkout.

Anything Helps: Addressing Homelessness in Seattle | Anything Helps At Anything Helps, we're committed to ending homelessness, not just managing it. Our action-oriented, outcome-driven approach has made a huge community impact since our founding in 2021. Join us in the fight to end homelessness with Anything Helps.

In 2021, five volunteers signed a contract with Seattle Public Schools to try something different, and Anything Helps was born.

Our team worked tirelessly, providing on-site, on-demand support, enhancing living conditions within the encampment, and ensuring our clients had immediate access to social services. We called the program Supportive Outreach.

Six months later, we had successfully housed all 92 members of the encampment, with a budget of only $65,000. The results were a testament to the power of community, collaboration, and lived experience in addressing homelessness.

Now, I'm thrilled to announce our next chapter - A partnership with the Washington State Health Care Authority and Amerigroup via the Foundational Community Supports program. This program will allow us to hire Supportive Outreach staff, expanding the organizations impact and providing even more comprehensive and continuous support to individuals experiencing homelessness living in encampments throughout .

We're excited about the road ahead and grateful for the support of our partners, volunteers, and the broader community. Together, we're making a difference, one camp at a time.

Stay tuned for updates on our journey and visit our website to learn how you can support our work or get involved yourself: www.anything-helps.org

Urgent Alert:
The U.S. is grappling with a new and deadly addition to the opioid crisis: Xylazine, also known as "tranq." This substance is rendering traditional life-saving treatments like Narcan and Medication-Assisted Treatment ineffective and has caused a sharp rise in fatal overdoses across the country.

Key Points:
- Xylazine can't be detected with standard tests.
- The substance is making fentanyl, already lethal, even more dangerous.
- Tranq overdoses cannot be reversed with Narcan

Time to Act:
The situation is dire. As we've learned from other crises, like the devastating Maui fires, prevention is crucial. We must act now to address this escalating threat before it's too late.

The Westward March of Xylazine: Sounding the Alarm The aftermath of the devastating Maui fires left the affected communities in mourning and the rest of the nation in intense reflection. Analyzing what went wrong, how the catastrophe could have been prevented, and the missed opportunities for intervention have become the central focus of most report

Anything Helps is against all forms of involuntary displacement, but works actively to of encampments conducted by the City of Seattle Government.

Sweeps are:

1. Expensive: According to Mayor Bruce Harrell’s “One ” homelessness dashboard, the City of Seattle Government spent $9.8 million on encampment and vehicle sweeps last year. In 2023, the city dramatically increased funding, allocating $29.1 million to “Encampment Resolution, Cleaning & Hygiene.”

2. Ineffective: ends . That's literally what the term means (home-less) and yet 100% of offers made to people during sweeps are beds. Only 22% of people accept these offers and move inside, with the remaining 78% simply moving their belongings to a nearby location. Either way, 100% of them are still homeless, as shelters and are NOT housing.

3. Harmful: A recent study conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Health Care for the Homeless Council revealed that cities that subject their homeless populations to frequent involuntary displacement have double the hospitalization rates, triple the emergency room visits and deaths, and five times the overdose rates when compared to those that don't. Read the study here: https://lnkd.in/gDXmKteP

Support us by learning more about our work and how you can help at www.anything-helps.org