Dear Friends:
As the cold weather comes, and those of us with homes tend to cozy up with a book, I am reminded of the early years of parenting. My husband liked to read out loud to our sons before bed, and a family favorite was The Hobbit. It’s about a person who is small in stature but big in heart. In a year that was filled with challenges for our community, I am reminded of the difference we can all make by being kind, together.
Our acts of kindness: A warm bed and a blanket for a neighbor who is cold. A meal for a man who is hungry. Safety for a mom who is scared but still care-giving. Waking up alive the next morning for a senior who had previously been sleeping in his van during a polar vortex.
These kindnesses were made possible over the last year because of you. Each is just one thing—a bed, a plate of food, a room to stay in—but together these kindnesses are saving lives and providing hope. When they are put together, they are not exactly small anymore. They become something much bigger.
I am proud to report that with your gifts we have made some big moves together.
We’ve finished renovating client rooms to have more sturdy beds as we have continued to serve as many people as a mid-sized hospital by providing 109,204 nights of shelter. Our bunk beds are allowing more families to have room to function while staying in former hotel rooms, and we continue to get a chuckle as our children leave small footprints on our ceilings while playing in their beds.
We finished our serving kitchen, so that the faith communities who birthed DuPagePads 40 years ago can now come in to bring that same hospitality and kindness to the 300+ guests staying safe each night at our Interim Housing Center.
We purchased a van and equipped it with food and resources so that our Street Outreach Team can more easily and more visibly meet people who are unsheltered where they are and connect them with resources—including our own Interim Housing Center, or our Winter Emergency Shelter program that saved another 155 lives this past winter.
We improved our bathrooms to serve clients with mobility issues. At any one time, about 100 of our guests are children, and another 100 are seniors, so having the ability to step easily into the shower makes them safer.
We’ve morphed our Supportive Housing work to not only focus on keeping 206 households in apartments of their own, including both people with disabilities and domestic violence survivors, but also to focus one building on intensive services for those with disabilities that make staying with a traditional landlord more challenging.
These acts of kindness, big and small, make an everlasting impact in the lives of our unsheltered neighbors. I am so grateful to you for walking along with us to make our work possible during a time when it is so desperately needed. Thank you for sharing your kindness with DuPadePads this year.
Warmly,
April Redzic
President & CEO