Click here to read the full article.

Here are the opportunities published about Spectrum:

Tutoring (Multicultural and New American youth)

Description: Provide academic support for New American and multicultural youth in Spectrum’s Resource Space.

Time commitment: Several hours each week

Organization: Spectrum Youth and Family Services

Location: Available upon sign-up

Contact: myp@spectrumvt.org

Mentoring (Teens and young adults)

Description: Become a positive adult role model for youth between 12 and 22. Each volunteer with be matched with a child, participate in their hobbies and help them set goals. Male mentors of color and LGBTQ+ identified mentors are especially needed. Volunteers must be at least 21 years old, pass a background check and able to provide reliable transportation.

Time commitment:

• Four hours per month over two to four sessions; minimum commitment of one year
• Required eight hours of training in one to two-hour increments

Organization: Spectrum Youth and Family Services

Location: Available upon sign-up

Contact: mentoring@spectrumvt.org

Meal donation

Description: Donate a meal large enough for 20-30 youths at Spectrum’s Drop-In Center, which provides basic needs services, warms meals, housing and case management referrals and supportive engagement to young adults between 14 and 25.

Time commitment: Varies

• Meals should arrive between 4-4:30 p.m.

Organization: Spectrum Youth and Family Services

Location: 177 Pearl St., Burlington, VT 05401

Contact:

• Main contact: cbrown@spectrumvt.org
• Contact to enter the building: (802) 777-5714

Organizing drop-in donations

Description: Help organize Spectrum’s clothing donations for youth.

Time commitment: Varies

Organization: Spectrum Youth and Family Services

Location: Available upon sign-up

Contact: dropin@spectrumvt.org

Miscellaneous volunteering

Description: Help with various Spectrum events and special projects, such as large mailings.

Time commitment: A few hours at a time

Organization: Spectrum Youth and Family Services

Location: Available upon sign-up

Contact: events@spectrumvt.org

The post Here are local volunteer opportunities to get on Santa’s Nice List next year appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

“Every person that I have met is an amazing human soul, whether they realize it or not.”

A group of students from Champlain College recently set out to tell the story of the young people that use Spectrum’s services, resulting in a short documentary titled “Spectrum Voices”. The teens and young adults featured in the documentary are getting the help that they need thanks to kindhearted and generous people like you who support Spectrum’s programs.

Want to learn more about the lives of the people that you’ve helped? Watch “Spectrum Voices” today to hear their stories.

The post Hear the stories of the youth you’ve helped support. appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

I’m guessing you already know the kinds of services Spectrum has to offer and I’m also guessing you have some assumptions about the individuals Spectrum works with.
Before I accessed Spectrum services, I assumed every person was homeless because they were in foster care or in some other type of unfortunate living situation. Boy was I wrong.

Every individual who utilizes these services is as one-of-a-kind as the circumstances that brought them there. I am no exception. Three years later, I still find a knot in my stomach and a little water in my eyes when I think about the events leading up to moving into the Landing, Spectrum’s emergency shelter.

However, when I think about how far I have come and everything I have accomplished, I am amazed and overflowing with gratitude. Four years ago, I was on top of the world after being accepted and awarded presidential scholarships at all of the colleges I applied to. I was graduating magna cum laude, I couldn’t wait to get out of the seemingly small and mundane town of Burlington, and I was ready to take on the world to make a change. What I didn’t know was that I would return less than a semester later and make my impact here.

It’s still too painful for me to delve into specifics about my return, but it happened at the end of 2015. For many months after being back in Burlington, I somehow carried on with life. I smiled, I made commitments, and I packed up the house I had lived in for 15 years and watched it start its own new adventure with its new inhabitants. Despite all this sadness that was weighing me down, I continued to smile, and have summer adventures and just take life day by day. Except I’m a planner and spontaneity was not, and still isn’t, my forte. So, summer 2016 can basically be titled “The Summer of Pretending.”

Like most things in life, I found that the pretending was manageable until it wasn’t. By the end of the summer I found myself falling down the all-too-familiar rabbit hole of depression, anxiety, and more.

I managed to pull myself out of the rabbit hole with assistance from inpatient psychiatry at UVMMC and, when I was ready to be in the world again, I came to the Landing.

Without a job or school, I spent my days at the Drop-In Center and what I realized after about ten minutes of being there was that I was not ready to be in the real world. I was still seriously depressed and anxious and, for lack of better terminology, a “hot mess”. I might have been out of the rabbit hole but I wasn’t ready to wander away from it.

Fast-forward two years and here I am. I have now been living on my own for nearly four months. I also just took a midterm for one of the two classes I am taking at CCV. Neither of these things would be happening if I hadn’t found people to encourage me to wander a little farther from the rabbit hole every day. And I definitely wouldn’t have done that if I hadn’t had Spectrum help me understand the importance of building and maintaining healthy connections with positive peers in my community.

I still don’t have a job and I am still a hot mess, but I have something that I didn’t have when I first came to Spectrum. I have a wonderful community of people who support me with pretty much anything and everything, and I have an endless amount of gratitude for the work that they do and the people who support them. I have a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of what being successful in life means, and I have a clearer idea of who I am and who I want to be.

I don’t know what I would be doing these days if I hadn’t stumbled into Spectrum when I did, but I know I am so glad I did. And I’m really glad it wasn’t easy because now I know what I stand for and what I value. Today, I am standing here because of Spectrum, and Spectrum is here because of people like you who show support—whether it’s making meals, making monetary donations, or being crazy enough to sleep outside in March. So, from the bottom of my heart to yours, thank you!

The post “Spectrum is here because of people like you.” appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Happy Valentine’s Day, from all of us at Spectrum. Today and every day, we are so grateful that people like you open your hearts to our youth, to make sure they have a safe place to be, a supportive community, and the help they need to thrive.

Thank you for keeping our youth in your heart.

With love and gratitude,
The Spectrum Team

The post Thank you for keeping our youth in your heart. appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Resource Coordinator Liz and Peer Outreach Worker Lizz, from left.

Last week, we said goodbye to Liz and Lizz, two amazing staff members at our Drop-In Center. You two have had such a tremendous positive impact on our youth and our staff. We will miss you so much. Thank you for all you do, and good luck!

Here are a few photos of your amazing work here over the years:

Liz and Lizz, left and third from left, with Rep. Peter Welch in December 2016.

Lizz is ready for Halloween!

Getting silly at Pizza Friday!

Lizz and Liz, center, with the Drop-In staff in March 2017

The post We’ll miss you, Liz and Lizz! appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

One of the youth who accesses our Drop-In Center wrote this article about a recent cooking contest we held at the First Unitarian Universalist Church at the top of Church Street in Burlington, VT, and we wanted to share it with you!

Different kitchen, different ingredients

4 teams, 3 rounds, 2 winners, 1 day

In November, six individuals from Spectrum Drop-In participated in the first ever “Chopped,” based off of the cooking show on The Food Network.

The event was held in the basement of the Unitarian Universalist Church in Burlington and lasted a total of 3 hours.

Tensions ran high within the first few minutes as contestants were forced to work together to locate tools and ingredients for their recipes.

Coming in with a wide range of culinary experience, many chefs surprised themselves with the final results of their work. Prizes were awarded to each contestant at the end of the competition. Participants are hoping for another round of Chopped sometime in the winter or early spring.

How it works:

Each round presented the chefs with unconventional ingredients to incorporate into their creations, which had to be cooked or baked and plated with reasonable presentation within a set time limit ranging from 15-30 minutes.

One team was eliminated at the end of each round. The contestants’ creations were judged based on taste, presentation, and creativity.

The entrée course in progress.

The winning dessert, incorporating graham crackers and chocolate fudge.

The post Different kitchen, different ingredients appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Eva Sollberger of Seven Days’ Stuck in Vermont visited our Drop-In Center last week and made this video about how your support is changing lives.

Watch to get a glimpse of our Drop-In Center and the work you’re making possible there.

“It is a huge relief to not have to worry about where your next meal is coming from,” said one young person.

As one youth put it, “You’re going to have good food, good nutrition, and they also provide clothing and hygiene products and showers and laundry, and it’s just so nice to know you have a place where you want to be in, because it’s a nice place. It’s a very safe community.”

The Drop-In Center is open seven days a week, thanks to you.

Thank you for your support and for believing in our young people.

If you’d like to sign up to help, visit our volunteer page.

The post “I’m grateful for second chances.” appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

We all need encouragement to be healthy sometimes! Our youth are staying active with the new Wellness Wall in our Drop-In Center. The wall encourages youth to engage in positive, healthy activities with our staff.

So, how does it work? From A to Z, there’s dozens of activity suggestions on the wall. For each activity a youth completes, they’ll earn one wellness point. The points add up, and youth can earn gift certificates for coffee or tea, movies, music performances, or other enrichment activities.

“One of our youth really wants to take a belly-dancing class. So when they have built up 30 points, they can take a dance class,” said Drop-In Coordinator Allie Forward.

It can be a simple activity. Like eating a whole serving of vegetables at dinner with our staff. Or maybe it’s something that’s much harder when you don’t have a support network. Like working with our staff to make a dentist appointment and go to the dentist.

The Wellness Wall encourages our youth to use healthy coping skills and do more active, wholesome things throughout the day. They can keep track of their points on personal wellness cards that they can decorate themselves. For youth who don’t have a safe space to go each night, we can store their wellness cards in the Drop-In Center so they can still earn points.

Not every wellness activity is based on physical fitness. The letter “T” for example, is “Talk it out! Work things out the cool way, with words!” This encourages our clients to use nonviolent communication to resolve a conflict and talk with a staff member about how it was helpful.

As one client put it, “Health is new to me because I’ve spent most of my life being bitter and self destructive.”

“There’s lots of room on the wall for youth to add their own ideas of wellness, and we’re open to that, too,” says Allie. “Our clients seem excited to better themselves and it’s a great way to get youth involved in activities that we offer.”

The post “Health is new to me”: The Drop-In Wellness Wall appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Kim told her story at our recent Empty Bowl Dinner, for an audience of over 250. Kim is a former Spectrum client, and she was willing to share her experiences about how she got her life back on track, thanks to the Spectrum community. Here is an excerpt.

If you had told me five years ago that I’d be working in a tech job as a webmaster for a business that has the word “Localvore” in it, I probably would have laughed and blown smoke in your face—I was smoking a lot of cigarettes back then. I don’t smoke cigarettes anymore. In fact, I’m trying to be healthy.

The health stuff is new to me because I’ve spent most of my life being bitter and self-destructive.

My life began in a trailer park in northern New York affectionately known as “Wiggle Town.” Soon after, we moved to a house I would later realize was home to much of my childhood trauma.

When I was five, my mother left my alcoholic, abusive father and became a high-strung, single mother of a spastic, autistic son and me.

When I was ten, we moved to Mississippi to start our lives over again. As it were, Mississippi was a bad place to start over, because four years later, we lost our house in Hurricane Katrina.

I was just starting high school so I only know an adolescent as a “Katrina Kid.” That being said, my version of teenage angst was looting abandoned buildings and stealing flooded bottles of alcohol and packs of cigarettes from the remnants of liquor stores and gas stations along Highway 90.

Nonetheless, I graduated high school—with honors, even. [But the] economy of Mississippi was—and still is—especially bad. My mother kicked me out of the house as soon as I turned 18 and I lived on a mattress and worked at Hobby Lobby until I hitched a ride with my high school sweetheart to Vermont to attend Burlington College.

I moved to Vermont with $200 and optimism, but soon learned that would not be enough. So, I contacted my biological father from across the lake, and visited the house where I spent the first five years of my life.

Now, I knew the first five years of my life were bad, but I didn’t realize how bad they were until I was already in the Fletcher Allen psych ward for having a ten-hour manic episode from listening to The White Album. They kept me in the psych ward for a week and by the time I got out, I was on a plethora of sedatives and mood stabilizers, had a huge medical bill, and had been kicked out of my apartment.

I am so thankful y’all raise nice children up here, because if it weren’t for the kindness of some of the kids I had met previously in college, I wouldn’t have made it. They . . . let me crash on their futon while I tried to get my life together.

One day, I visited Burlington College and broke down crying in the financial aid office, admitting I was homeless but I really wanted to go back to school. One of the faculty members brought me to Spectrum’s Drop-In Center on Pearl Street and I started living in the Emergency Shelter shortly after. I stayed in the shelter for six months, until I moved to the Spectrum residence. Spectrum gave me a place to put my trash bags of clothes and a bed of my own. The shelter staff gave me the guidance and support I always wanted from my parents but so rarely received.

During that time, I attended the Community College of Vermont (CCV) and started working at the Committee on Temporary Shelter (COTS). I was living in one shelter and working in another. I saved my money while I was at Spectrum and in June of 2012 I moved into my own apartment. I have not fallen into homelessness since.

I worked at COTS for two years, until it was too emotionally taxing for me. Then I started working part-time at a local start-up. I started working only 15 hours a week, doing menial tasks on the computer, but as the company has grown, so has my position. I now work there full-time in my first salary job. My bosses are very supportive, and have even paid for me to take computer programming classes.

My life has never been so good and my future has never been so bright and I know, without a doubt, that this would not have been possible without the love and support I have received from Spectrum. Thank you.

The post “My future’s never been so bright.” appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.

Liz and Jas are the AmeriCorps staff who work in our Drop-In Center, located on 177 Pearl Street in Burlington. They’re also the driving forces behind the new BTV Street Chronicle, a self-published zine that features anonymous stories, poems, statements, art, and words from the youth that Spectrum serves.

We took some time to sit down with Liz and Jas to hear more about the project.

The street chronicle, available online, at our offices, and around downtown Burlington, is meant to empower homeless youth to share their stories with other Burlington residents whose lives are drastically different.

“We started talking about it while we were in Montpelier [for an AmeriCorps training],” Jas said. “I knew about the Cleveland Street Chronicle in Ohio; you can buy it outside the open-air markets. It’s entirely self-sustaining.”

In Ohio, homeless vendors purchase the papers for 35 cents and sell them for $1.25. The vendors keep their profits, and the chronicle begins work on its next issue.
Liz and Jas shared two main reasons for creating the chronicle here in Burlington. First, they wanted to encourage homeless and at-risk youth to share their stories. Liz says, “someone will come in [to the Drop-In Center] and they’ll be talking with me about their day and then I’ll offer, ‘it sounds like what you’re going through is really tough right now. Want to write about it?’ I know the creative spark is there, but how do we reach it?” One way is the street chronicle.

The chronicle includes the voices of youth in our shelter and residences and out. It helps youth who need help as well as community members to learn about what Spectrum offers, but it also amplifies the voices of youth who live outside.

So there’s the second reason: to help Burlington residents hear the voices of these young people in their community. As Jas and Liz put it, “we want to challenge the community to be confronted with the lived experiences of homeless youth living in our town.” Even if it’s uncomfortable. “You see kids sitting out on Church Street, but at the end of the day, they’re headed to their tent. Youth homelessness is pervasive and visible if you aren’t ignoring it.”

So, where is this headed? Right now, Liz and Jas put out one edition of the zine every two months. Next up, they’d love to see it continue independently—like the Cleveland Street Chronicle—without their guidance. If youth took on the BTV Street Chronicle as their own project, Liz and Jas said, it would be even more accessible and meaningful.

Liz and Jas, Spectrum’s AmeriCorps staff members

They also brought up possibilities of collaborating with different areas of Spectrum, including the Multicultural Youth Project and the affiliated youth group Diversity Rocks! They’ve talked about bringing the chronicle to the Winooski Teen Center to gather voices from that city, too. The more available it is, the more learning can take place.

This isn’t an easy task. Jas shares one of the challenges they feel in producing the zine: “I would hate for folks who access Drop-In to feel like a success story or a sad story.” At the same time, this zine shows what life is like for the youth we serve, and how Liz and Jas—and all Spectrum staff—work to empower them to change their lives.

“Everyone needs an outlet,” Liz says. “Kids who used to laugh in my face about the zine are drawing their experiences, or writing them down. A lot of the kids we serve are in crisis on a day-to-day basis. There are people who’ve accessed Spectrum for years, who’ve been homeless for years. But when you put the tools—pen and paper—in front of someone, ask, ‘what’s going on for you? Did you have a good day? A bad day?’ That can change things.”

Read the Street Chronicle here:   Volume 1   |   Volume 2

The post From our Drop-In Staff: Creating the BTV Street Chronicle appeared first on Spectrum Youth & Family Services.