New Programs

This effort began in late January: Our outreach to men for whom asking for h-e-l-p sounds like a four-letter word.  Staffed by all men volunteers.  For thousands of years across all cultures, men have gotten a message that they are responsible for providing for their families.  So asking for help can seem impossible.  We understand that.  But providing help is why FISH has been here for more than 40 years. 

 

 

Men’s Night at FISH

 

FISH, Inc. of Broomfield

Fellowship In Serving Humanity

Truancy Prevention

We know that lack of education can lead to poverty, so truancy prevention is a form of poverty prevention.  FISH has committed to working with the Broomfield County Court to help keep kids in school.  Our Exec. Director, Terry, participates on Broomfield’s Truancy Review Board on referred cases from the schools, and may provide mediation to cases, where needed.

Helping People Out of Poverty

Our most important new effort is in the developmental stage at this point.  This evolves out of a new phrase added to our mission statement by the Board of Trustees: to provide our clients with “...hope and tools to rise out of poverty.”

We are conducting an assessment of what tools our clients need, evaluating different tools we could use, figuring out how to track our progress on individual clients, and with which of our various client groups we’ll start.  Then we will recruit and train volunteers who will work in this new effort.  This will be the most difficult and most rewarding thing we’ve will have tried in 48 years.  If you are interested in becoming involved in this effort, please email our Volunteer coordinator at jan.k@broomfieldfish.org.  We expect we will begin training late this summer/early fall.

Saturday Morning Hours

We began on June 11th to be open Saturday mornings for existing clients with appointments who work during the work week, and find it difficult to get to FISH for food.  These clients are not able to work enough hours, or their pay rate is too low to provide for their families.  We could only do this with the help of more volunteers, and 22 new volunteers signed up to make our Saturday morning hours happen.  We started with every other Saturday, and will move to every Saturday this Fall.

Reusable Bags

May 16th, FISH began distributing food in reusable bags canvas bags.  We had been using 150—250 plastic bags a day, and we don’t want to think about where those bags end up.  See our Fundraising page to see what organizations and businesses have generously contributed the money to purchase and imprint more than 3,000 bags for our clients.