One of our community support efforts this past holiday season was to help at the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen in Costa Mesa. The kitchen’s staff and around 150 active volunteers serve approximately 300 meals a day to homeless men, women and children in the community, and see that number swell to about 800 on holidays like Christmas.
If you’re from the Costa Mesa area, you may be familiar with the Someone Cares Soup Kitchen’s work, which began in the summer of 1986 and moved to its permanent home at 720 West 19th Street in 1997. In addition to providing three healthy meals a day to homeless, working poor and unemployed, senior citizens, and the mentally and physically challenged, they also tutor disadvantaged children up to the 3rd grade.
The underlying mission is to provide guests a place that they know they are always welcomed; that, as their name says so eloquently, “Someone Cares.”
It’s easy for you to show that you care, too. New volunteers are always welcome to help and be helped in return by the sense of fulfillment we get from our time there. Or if you don’t have the time, you can donate and make a significant impact for very little money.
A typical lunch at Someone Cares costs $1.33, and a donation of $40, which can be made through the website, feeds 30 people.
The need is real. Someone Cares emphasizes that many of its guests are children, and a Los Angeles Daily News report from November 2014 says California’s population of homeless children is growing.
A national study cited by the newspaper says the population of homeless children across our state rose by 4 percent from 2012 to 2013, increasing from 505,562 to 526,708. Nationally, child homelessness increased by 8 percent from 2012 to 2013.
Angela Rosales, co-chair of the Los Angeles Coalition to End Youth Homelessness, told the newspaper there are between 6,000 and 10,000 unaccompanied youth and young adults each year in Los Angeles County who are homeless.
In San Bernardino County, 33,274 students have experienced homelessness at some point in their lives, about 8.1 percent of the total county student population of 411,000, according to the LADN.
We’re glad the Avrek legal team can do its part to help homeless and otherwise needy children and adults in our community. We urge you to help out if you can at Someone Cares in Costa Mesa or a similar organization in your community.
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