Building Community with Amazon’s Local Love and Homestretch
Since day one, Destination Lighting has operated under the belief that people come before business.
When our neighbors at Amazon reached out to us for help with their program, Local Love, we jumped at the opportunity. Local Love connects retailers, service providers and volunteers to provide valuable resources and support to non-profit organizations.
We recently participated in an event involving Homestretch, a Virginia-based nonprofit focused on helping families with children. We donated floor lamps to help them remodel 3 of their projects:
1. Employment center makeover.
2. Building a new health and wellness center.
3. Remodeling their multipurpose room.
Read more about the Local Love/Homestretch story here.
Ways to get involved
Nominate a charity in need on Amazon’s Local Love site.
Sign up for Local Love’s newsletter for volunteer opportunities.
Get involved directly with Homestretch.
Donate to the Homestetch Wishlist
More about Homestretch
Homestretch provides housing and comprehensive services to about 75 families each year. All come directly from shelters, and all have children in their care. In fact, the average age of a person in Homestretch is only nine years old. 65% are homeless due to domestic violence or human trafficking; others are homeless due to loss of employment, health crises, death of loved ones, wars in other nations, or generational poverty. They come to Homestretch displaced, abused, and often unequipped to support their families because of the atrocities that have been waged against them. Yet, two to three years later, they leave empowered, celebrated, having found a good life for their families, and with the concrete tools necessary for not just surviving, but with the resources to truly thrive.
Although all families entering Homestretch are homeless, in crisis, and earning poverty wages, 90% successfully complete the program by moving into permanent housing that they can afford on the income they earn. The average rise in income for a graduating Homestretch family in 2015 was 154.9%. Most importantly, the families do not return to homelessness. Successive outcome studies have demonstrated that 95% of Homestretch’s graduated families remain safely housed and employed two to five years after leaving our care; this puts Homestretch in the forefront nationally – no other homeless program in the U.S. has shown better results.
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