Hollywood 4WRD's 2024 Holiday Volunteer Roundup

H4WRD’s 2024 Holiday Volunteer Round-up

This season of gratitude offers a great opportunity first of all to extend thanks to all in the H4WRD community committed to our collective mission of preventing and ending street homelessness in Greater Hollywood.

Since we receive so many requests from folks eager to help out over the holidays, we also wanted to use this moment of heightened community engagement to share a roundup of all the volunteer opportunities available through many of the agencies in our H4WRD community working tirelessly to help Hollywood’s most vulnerable.

Aviva Family & Children’s Services:

Our partners at Aviva Volunteers have a number of volunteer opportunities at their Interim Housing site, Wallis House:

• Volunteers needed to host holiday craft stations during their December holiday party. Date TBD @ 4-5:30pm (will most likely be sometime during Christmas week, before or after the holiday)
• Volunteers needed to host holiday crafts and/or activities during winter break for the children (Dates between 12/16- 1/3 weekdays)
• Volunteers needed to do host activity/crafts for children during moms only yoga class on 12/27/24 @ 6-7:30pm.
  

Aviva is also having a toy drive and hygiene drive for the families at their Wallis House shelter. Please click on the flyers below for more information or if you’re interested in making a donation:

• Aviva Holiday Gift Drive
• Aviva Hygiene Drive

Compassionate Connection/Hollywood Adventist Church:

Compassion Connection has updated their upcoming opportunities throughout the holiday season, which interested folks can access by CLICKING HERE.

• Their boutique is currently accepting donations of clothing, shoes, accessories, bedding, camping gear, and small household goods. 

Please email Andrew at: andrew@hollywoodadventist.org or call 818-351-6770 if you have items to donate.

Food on Foot:

• Sunday Serving Program Volunteers
  • Each Sunday, Food on Foot provides many resources including shelf-stable food, a hot chicken meal, hygiene, and clothing to our unhoused, low income, and at-risk community members. Volunteers help distribute these items to more than 250 neighbors every Sunday at the Los Angeles LGBT Center (1625 N. Schrader Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90028) from 12:30 PM - 2:30 PM. To sign up for this opportunity, volunteers can visit our website: https://www.foodonfoot.org/volunteer/
    

See below for additional Food on Food opportunities. If interested, please email randi@foodonfoot.org or text or call directly at 661-313-9002:

• Workshop Facilitator
  • We need experienced volunteers in a variety of areas to facilitate one-hour workshops on Sundays. This volunteer-led life-skills workshop engages our program members in content that furthers their understanding of areas such as financial literacy (budget management, understanding credit, savings and planning, etc.), employment fundamentals (resume development, job searching, interview skills, etc.), housing support (housing search basics, connecting with landlords, what types of things to look for, managing a home, etc.), and then other areas such as goal setting and planning, time management, art therapy, and others. These take place on Sundays in the mornings on site.
• ‍FRIEND Mentor‍
  • This wonderful opportunity engages volunteers one on one with members of our program to support them in their goals as they move through our program. Our FRIEND volunteers are mentors who communicate with these members throughout the week and the duration of their goal to track progress and achievements. Training and team support is provided and the schedule is based on the FRIEND and mentee availability.
• ‍Auxiliary Support‍
  • During the week, our very small team is outreaching for essential donations and we need support to pick up these items from various locations throughout the area. We would be so happy to have some support from volunteers to do this. We have scheduled pick ups throughout the week and then a few last-minute calls we encounter. We need car capacity in order to pick up some of the bigger donations including our partners at LA Regional Food Bank, M.E.N.D., Cinnabon, and more. Schedule is available at the beginning of each week.
• ‍Sunday Morning Resource Transportation‍
  • On Sunday mornings, we need a small volunteer team to help us get all of our necessary supplies from our storage office to our distribution site which is about 4 miles. We load all available cars at the site in Beverly Hills and transport it to our serving site in Hollywood. It takes about an hour and has a huge impact on our programming.

First Presbyterian Church of Hollywood:

FPCH is currently looking for volunteers to help out at their Winter Shelter opening in early 2025.

Please email Amie at: aquigley@fpch.org to be added to the list of Winter Shelter volunteers.

Hollywood Food Coalition:

The good news is HoFoCo is currently all filled up with volunteers for their Annual Thanksgiving Diner. But there are plenty of ways folks can still plug in with their efforts over the holidays:

• Contribute to their Thanksgiving Wishlist
• Sign up to sponsor and/or organize a HoFoCo Food Drive

Sign up for their regularly occurring weekly volunteer shifts

My Friend’s Place:

The biggest need at My Friend's Place this season is collecting items for their MFP Holiday Wishlist

• Please bring or ship all new & unwrapped gifts to My Friend’s Place by December 18th.
  

MFP’s upcoming volunteer opportunities include:

• Holiday Celebration December 20th: Volunteer slots still available
• Black History Month (February): Seeking special meal providers
• LA Charity Half Marathon and LA Big 5k: volunteer opportunities on March 15th and 16th with additional events leading up to the run

For information on individual volunteer opportunities, e-mail volunteer@myfriendsplace.org

SELAH Neighborhood Homeless Coalition:

The dates for SELAH's many volunteer opportunities remain the same throughout the holiday season. See the flyer above for the opportunities in Hollywood, and please download their flyer HERE to check out the availability at their non-Hollywood sites.

We're grateful to Rachel Sanoff, SELAH's Volunteer Engagement Manager, for compiling a list of all of SELAH's upcoming December + January Hollywood opportunities in this doc. If you're interested in learning more or signing up for any of SELAH's volunteer shifts, please do so here!

St. James’ in-the-city Episcopal Church:

• ​​See below for St. James’ many opportunities, but please keep in mind that they can’t easily accommodate groups who want to volunteer as a group.  
• St. James' four weekly events are described on their website. Anyone can sign up using their signup site here. The Church’s Volunteer Agreement helps to set the stage for expectations.
  

We’re grateful to St. James’ Volunteer Lead, Margaret Ecker for sharing more about the Church’s upcoming needs:

‍For the holidays, our Soup Kitchen schedule will sustain a couple changes: The one fun change we make for Thanksgiving is to move our weekly CookFest from Thursday to Wednesday. We do NOT do anything special on Thanksgiving Day or Christmas Day.  We DO serve a delicious meal of Thanksgiving Leftovers on Friday and Saturday after Thanksgiving.  And we will put together a series of great meals centered around tamales and posole during the week before Christmas.  But Soup Kitchen will be CLOSED on Tuesday Dec 24, Christmas Eve.  

THANKSGIVING WEEK SCHEDULE:

• Tuesday November 26  Soup Kitchen 3:30pm to 5:30pm  some text
  • Sign up here.
• Wednesday November 27: Thanksgiving CookFest, noon to 3pm. No sign up necessary. Volunteers can show up any time.
• Friday November 29: Soup Kitchen 2pm to 5pm some text
  • Sign up here.
• Saturday November 30: Soup Kitchen 8:30am to 1pm  some text
  • Sign up here.
    

DECEMBER HOLIDAY MEAL SCHEDULE:

• Thursday December 19  4pm to 6:30pm  CookFest (cook only, no serving)  some text
  • Sign up here
• Friday December 20 Soup Kitchen 2pm to 5pm  some text
  • Sign up here
• Saturday December 21 Soup Kitchen 8:30am to 1pm  some text
  • Sign up here
• Tuesday December 24  Soup Kitchen CANCELED

St. James Episcopal Church SOUP KITCHEN

• 3903 Wilshire Blvd, Los Angeles, CA  90010
• Located at the corner of Wilshire and St. Andrews Place. Two blocks from Wilshire/Western Metro station (Purple Line). On bus lines 20/720.
• email: GreatFood@STJLA.org
• Soup Kitchen Phone: 213-878-3425

Please see H4WRD's list of all the local entities and services in our community deserving of our support this and every season!