DOROTHY’S OUTREACH PROGRAM

ABOUT USDorothy’s Outreach Program will offer our young people access to our paying it forward movement  conjunction with our Community Service Center stimulating growth. 
Dorothy's Outreach Program (DOP) identifies and assists in the efforts to help runaways, homeless, and street youth. Our staff works continuously hard with the help of local agencies to provide these youth the services needed.

DOP is an extension of Dorothy's Place, which is critical component of the Outreach Program. DOP will have a  drop-In center (Shirley Spot), which will operate in the morning, afternoons into early evening which will offer counseling services, enrichment opportunities, mentors, and basic essentials to youth in need. Knox Community Center where our young people have a safe place to go and just be.

We Also, have Bella Meals where giving you a hot meal that is made with love and care. With our Pay it forward events where we go out in the community an do it like it say Pay it forward.

Dorothy's Outreach Programs purpose is to serve as a bridge between the community. DOP extends its services for young adults’ ages 13 to 24. We will focus on building trustful and meaningful relationships between the DOP staff and youth. It is our goal to prevent the exploitation of our youth being homeless or in unsafe living conditions as well as to increase the safety, well-being, and self-sufficiency of each young person we encounter. In the event we are unable to provide specific services a youth may need; we will refer them to various agencies we partner with within our network.

Dorothy's Outreach Program involves moving outside the walls of the agency to engage with people experiencing homelessness who may be disconnected and alienated not only from mainstream services and supports, but from the services targeting homeless persons as well.

This requires a higher degree of inter-agency collaboration.    
There are several key challenges to a successful outreach program:

First, Dorothy's Outreach involves working with visibly homeless youth living on the streets there needs to be outreach strategies for the invisible homeless, that is, people who are couch surfing or living without shelter in hard to reach and remote places, etc.

Second, outreach can be challenging because people being approached are not obliged to talk with or otherwise engage workers, in the way they might have to within the walls of an agency.

Finally, many people will avoid going to mainstream shelters and day programs for good reasons – they are afraid, they have pets (for company and safety), and staying in shelters may mean disrupting important and close relationships they see as vital to surviving on the streets.

This means outreach can be slow, and the results can sometimes feel ambiguous. There is some evidence that the ‘stages of change’ approach to conducting outreach is more effective, since the intervention can be tied to a person’s accepted willingness to move forward with their lives.
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Our mission is to operate as a conduit building capacity for social change and the advancement of our youth, families, and community-based organizations working together to develop a sustainable academic and cultural pipelines from elementary to college, from college to career and back to their community.

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