We have a day for giving thanks. We have two days for shopping deals. And now we have Giving Tuesday, a global day dedicated to giving back. The United Nations established Tuesday, Dec. 2, 2014, as the day for charities, families, businesses, community centers, and students around the world to celebrate giving.
So here are 10 deserving local causes that need our generosity:
1. Wounded Warrior Homes provides transitional housing to single, post-9/11 combat veterans with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Their latest venture is Harvest House, a student-built, environmentally conscious, solar powered, ADA compatible home that will house homeless combat veterans with PTSD or traumatic brain injuries as they transition to civilian life.
2. Jewish Family Service When a family needs help following a disaster, when a family yearns to adopt a child, when a single parent can no longer make ends meet, when a senior needs food, transportation, or companionship — JFS makes a difference in people’s lives. JFS is dedicated to serving the entire community. It is one of San Diego’s premier human care service organizations, serving more than 35,000 people annually throughout San Diego County and the Coachella Valley.
3. Vista Hill programs range from early intervention and preventive work with troubled young people, to treatment with school age kids, to long-term special education and training for individuals with developmental disabilities. Vista Hill assist families in very difficult situations. It serves challenging populations that most other agencies shy away from. Its philosophy is that no family is fully immune from the social, emotional, economic or health related impact of mental illness, substance abuse and developmental disabilities.
4. San Diego Rescue Mission is a non-profit homeless shelter and recovery center serving thousands of homeless, hungry, and poor men, women, and children in San Diego. Among the many services provided are help for San Diego’s homeless and poor populations to help them create better lives for themselves and, in turn, build a better community. Programs include an overnight emergency shelter for women and their children, a recuperative care center that addresses the critical need of housing homeless men and women being released from the hospital or requiring medical attention, and a free psychotherapy center that provides free therapy to homeless, addicted, abused individuals and those at risk.
5. Father Joe’s Villages is Southern California’s largest homeless services provider, serving the nearly 9,000 homeless individuals in San Diego, the 4th largest homeless population in the nation and home to the nation’s largest population of homeless veterans. Father Joe’s provides up to 4,000 meals and a continuum of care to nearly 1,500 individuals every day — from infants and adolescents to adults and seniors. Its medical clinic sees over 3,500 patients each year. And it provides nearly 40 percent of the beds available to San Diego’s homeless population.
6. The Angel’s Depot provides a free, emergency, mid-month meal box, for seniors who are at-risk for malnutrition and live with the anxiety of food insecurity. The 24-pound, nutritious, non-perishable Senior Emergency Meal Box contains food for 21 meals — breakfasts, lunches, dinners and snacks for a week. Food selections are senior favorites, high in protein, fiber and foliates with moderate sugar. Since 2006, The Angel’s Depot has provided impoverished seniors in San Diego County with 62,000 free emergency Senior Meal Boxes containing food for 1.3 million senior meals. Each month nearly 1,000 seniors receive this food lifeline at 24 distribution sites countywide. Seniors served have an average income of $866 per month.
7. Casas de Luz is a nonprofit social action project dedicated to transforming individuals, families and communities on both sides of the San Diego/Tijuana border and creating self-sustaining change through youth empowerment, cross-cultural relationships, leadership development, and environmental sustainability. Based out of the Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of San Dieguito in Solana Beach, Casas works in communities in Tijuana and all around San Diego County. Casas de Luz focuses on three main programs: home and community center builds, “Repurposing with a Purpose” (its donations program), and community work in San Diego and Tijuana.
8. Second Chance helps change the lives of some of the most “difficult-to-serve” populations in the region including at-risk youth, the homeless, recovering addicts and former prisoners reentering the community. Since 2003, Second Chance has placed over 4,000 graduates (and counting) into employment with 1,754 local employers with an average starting wage of $10.05/hour. Second Chance’s two-year program emphasizes individual accountability. Participants engage in 160 hours of intensive instruction to break barriers to self-sufficiency, obtain new job skills, develop résumés and career plans, and practice interviewing.
9. Ocean Discovery Institute reaches 6,000 low-income students and community members each year with tuition-free programs that empower urban and diverse young people to protect our ocean and natural environment. Ocean Discovery is the only non-profit in the San Diego region expressly dedicated to educating urban and diverse youth through ocean science. It provides services at 13 public schools in City Heights, a neighborhood of cultural and linguistic richness, but one in great need, and where environmental, social and educational issues are closely intertwined.
10. Mama’s Kitchen delivers three nutritional meals a day, seven days a week, at no charge, to men, women and children living with AIDS or cancer. Mama’s Kitchen believes that everyone is entitled to the basic necessity of life — nutritious food.