July Peak News
Youth Spotlight
Anthony has only been working with Employment & Education for a short period of time, but he’s been incredibly consistent in his efforts to finish his Employment Skills Training. He is punctual, hard-working and communicative, and he has a great attitude about working toward his future goals.
Anthony recently started working at Peak Thrift, and when asked to describe their newest employee, Store Manager Oliver explained that “Anthony is a creative soul!” He enjoys making art, photography and music, especially rap. In fact, visitors to our Drop-In Center can often find him spitting fire and dropping beats in the new music studio!
Peak Spotlight
2020 ushered in a year of unique challenges for Urban Peak, as we continued to operate support services through a global pandemic. Thankfully, 2021 brought with it hope and possibility in the form of COVID-19 vaccines, but these presented their own challenges. Primarily, how could we most efficiently get youth access to vaccinations in a way that minimized the burden on them?
“With the help from our partners, coordinating the vaccine clinics was truly a group effort, making it less daunting,” said Stephanie Echer, Urban Peak’s medical services coordinator.
What would have been an impossibly demanding task for our staff to attempt alone was made exponentially easier because of our integral partnerships with Sheridan Health Clinics, Denver Health, Denver Department of Public Health & Environment (DDPHE) and Colorado Coalition for the Homeless (CCH).
Our goal was to provide as low a barrier as possible for youth to access vaccine resources, but this was often difficult to accomplish when coordinating appointment times and travel arrangements with our more distant partners. Fortunately, we were able to work with DDPHE and CCH to open vaccine clinics right at the Drop-In Center where youth are already comfortable regularly accessing daytime services. Since April 1st, we’ve been able to provide free vaccines to 45% of youth staying at the Shelter!
With the COVID-19 Delta variant rapidly sweeping the country, this week the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) updated their recommendations for mask-use among vaccinated individuals. It's more important than ever to get vaccinated.
Partner Highlight
Urban Peak’s Employment & Education program works hard to connect youth with opportunities for personal and professional development, including GED programs, access to post-secondary education, resume-building and more. One way we accomplish this is through the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act (WIOA), a 2014 federal law that makes it possible for our youth to secure paid employment with our three WIOA partners: SAME Café, Lucky Bikes and our social enterprise store, Peak Thrift.
We recently held a presentation at the Shelter featuring representatives from each of our WIOA partners. The partners had a chance to talk with youth about their programs, what to expect from their work, and what skills youth would develop. Youth were engaged and asked plenty of questions, making for a very successful meeting!
Jon and Trung from Lucky Bikes explained that all interns at their business have the opportunity to build their own bikes for free, using the skills and knowledge that they learn on the job. Likewise, SAME Café's rep Theresa Marten spoke at length about the ServSafe classes that they offer to their interns, through which youth are able to hone their kitchen skills and attain food-handling certifications as well! Theresa discussed the importance of introducing youth to safe, health-focused communal spaces, where youth "know they can have a healthy meal and be surrounded by healthy adults."
We’re incredibly grateful to our WIOA partners for their continued efforts to supply youth with real-world work experience and make the community a better place.
Learn more about WIOA on our website.
Connecting Paradigms
Matt Bennett is a relentless advocate for trauma-informed care and other interventions that help people and communities heal. He combines his training in community psychology with his practical experience as a therapist and leader to develop research-based solutions to improve the health of individuals, staff and organizations.
Having first learned about Urban Peak through his work as a program director at Denver Children’s Home in the early 2000s, Matt has since become an invaluable partner of Urban Peak’s. As an advocate for housing as a human right, he shares our passion to end youth homelessness and help young people find their best lives. To further that goal, he has guided staff through several trainings on trauma-informed care and motivational interviewing. We deeply appreciate Matt’s generosity of time and spirit to help us ignite the spark in youth to exit homelessness and live self-determined, fulfilled lives.
You can find out more about Matt's work on his website.
Throughout the pandemic, Urban Peak has remained steadfast and committed to our mission and our youth. And as we look ahead I remain an optimist at heart. In the rear view mirror, we see the challenges and hard times of the past 18 months and how it has impacted our youth, ourselves and each other. We see both optimism and doubt, and sometimes my personal anxiety and pandemic exhaustion can feel overwhelming. It breaks my heart to look outside my office window and see the ebb and flow of encampments offering meager shelter for our unhoused neighbors, and then I feel a flush of pride when I see our outreach staff engaging with youth in the spaces. It is impossible not to see the crisis on our streets. The affordable housing crisis, the impending end to the eviction moratorium and the trauma that all of us, especially people experiencing homelessness, have survived is real. We cannot ignore the impact that will have on our community and of course on our youth.
Yet on the positive side? I feel an enormous amount of pride and gratitude toward the Urban Peak family. Our staff, our board, our donors, our passion for the youth we serve has never wavered. Never. The year ahead will no doubt have challenges, but as we stick together and strengthen our bonds, Urban Peak will continue to save lives and transform what our communities look like in the years to come.
The support of the Urban Peak family makes all of this possible. I hope you enjoy seeing what we’ve been up to this summer and stay tuned as we look ahead and share our vision for the future because ending youth homelessness is possible and critical.
Thank you for your ongoing support of Urban Peak and our youth!
Gratefully,
Christina Carlson, CEO
