It is our hope to provide wrap-around service and support for our women. The only way to make it out of this cycle is to provide support to those areas where traditionally a parent or caring adult would step in to help.

Volunteer Opportunities with no direct contact:

• Fundraising Events- If you are creative and love to raise money, we’d love to have you!
• Serve on a committee to plan major fundraising events
• Ticket Sales
• Set Up/Tear Down
• Event Staff (check-in, auction runner, etc)
• Vendor Events- We have several events throughout the year and plan to add more in the future. We would love help in the following areas:
• Set Up/Tear Down
• Host a bracelet party
• Lunches- Providing lunches for our women during the work week blesses them in a special way. Bringing their lunch to work can sometimes stress them financially or sometimes they aren’t sure what to bring. Providing lunches is a way to give them something to look forward to and helps them to feel loved and supported. They enjoy meeting the people who support their programs!
• Donating Resources- Do you own a vacation home you’d love to offer for a retreat? Own a place to host an event? Looking for an organization to donate a car or property to? Know someone who could serve as a resource partner? Let us know!
• Donating Clothing- We have a wonderful partnership with a local consignment store. They allow us to bring in clothing and generously give us 75% of the sale! If you have gently worn, well taken care of name-brand women's clothing we would be happy to take it off your hands! We let our participants go through the items first and take what they need. Then we take what is left to the consignment shop. You make space in your closet, our young women get a basic need met, and we get to make a little income to put back into our programs. Everyone wins!
• Car Maintenance- Our women often have vehicles that have problems and haven’t been taught how to take care of a vehicle. They could benefit from having someone to call who can:
• Take a look at the car and see what might be wrong,
• Perform basic fixes.
• Look at a car they are thinking of buying to see if it is a good car/deal.
• Teach car maintenance like how to check and change the oil, how to change a flat tire, or how to install windshield wipers.
• Moving and hauling- Sometimes our women need to move apartments or need to have things moved. Having someone to help lift the heavy things and a person with a truck simply makes things easier.
• Prayer Team- We could not do what we do without constantly seeking the light of Christ in our lives and in the lives of our young women. Our women and our team continually face decisions, situations, and obstacles that are bigger than we are. Bi-weekly, we send out a prayer list to our prayer team and ask them to join us in prayer about what we are facing.
• Emergency Needs- From time to time, we have participants who need immediate financial assistance with food, diapers, formula, essential utilities, gas. Volunteering in this way involves sending money, gift cards, gas cards, Uber cards, or items that can be delivered via Amazon, Instacart, Shipt, Doordash, or Uber. We will place you on an email list and when we have a need send out a request. If you are able to meet the need at that time, just email us back and let us know. Someone will reach back out and let you know what the next step is.

Volunteer Opportunities working directly with our clients (requires training):

• Transportation- Many of our women do not have transportation and those who have it, it isn’t always reliable. Providing rides to work or medical appointments would not only give them a safe ride, it would allow us to put money into our programs instead of putting it into Ubers.
• Medical- Some of our women need assistance with medical appointments and learning how to advocate for their care. Due to past experiences, some medical appointments may be really uncomfortable or even scary. Having someone to go with them for moral support can help them feel safer. When they are in the hospital, they don’t always have someone to come see them, check to be sure they are ok, or sit and wait with them. Having someone visit them and show they care, helps them to feel like they matter and aren’t alone. It's not an uncommon experience to be confused or have questions at the doctor. These women are no different. Sometimes they aren’t sure what questions to ask and depending on their life experience, they may not feel like they can question the doctor. Or, they may ask questions but don't understand the answer and don't ask for clarification because they don't want to look or feel stupid. Finally, they may not know what is acceptable treatment.
• Administrative Tasks- Often our women need help finding insurance, filing for assistance (food stamps, housing or childcare vouchers) and other programs (like Vocational Rehab, Disability, or SSI, filling out forms for new services, or researching things like a medical condition or finding a car. This can be time-consuming but is sporadic. Helping here is direct contact, but you may only work with one young woman once or twice.
• Home Management Mentor- The cleaning and organizing abilities of our women vary. Due to trauma, learning disabilities, and mental illness, some of them really struggle with keeping things organized and clean. Some of them have just never been taught how to do it. If they spent most of their time in group homes, run by employees and not parents, how to keep a home was never taught and certainly never modeled. A life moving from one place to the next can create a variety of behaviors. Some women develop the need to keep everything in fear of not having what they need. Others develop a habit of throwing everything away. Teaching our women how to clean and organize is a very practical and needed way to help. Being a part of this team, we hope to place you with the same woman until she no longer needs the assistance and then you can start with someone different.
• Finance Coaching- When you've been living in survival mode, working with limited income, making sure you have food, a place to sleep, lights, water, heat, and the essentials become your main priority. Budgeting what money you do have can be scary as it forces you to face the reality of how little there is to go around. One emergency can set you back in every area. Learning to budget and manage your money is essential to independence and maintaining food and housing. Poverty is often generational and the escape from that requires education and support. Our participants want to learn and change their futures! We need coaches to teach them how to budget, save money, plan for emergencies, and the language of investing. Breaking the cycle of foster care often includes breaking the cycle of poverty!
• Meal Planning and Grocery Shopping- Anyone can walk into a grocery store and buy a frozen pizza or a lean cuisine. Convenience foods will fill their bellies but they are expensive to purchase and are not ideal for more than one. Most of our participants can cook and thankfully, the majority of our participants get assistance with groceries via food stamps. However, they sometimes run out of food stamps and depend on food pantries to fill in the gaps. Learning how to use their food stamps dollars wisely and plan meals that are both nutritious and tasty will benefit them, their children, and the agencies that support food scarcity. We need people who know how to meal-plan, how to shop on a budget, and how to make groceries and leftovers stretch. Volunteering in this way would involve meeting with our participants to teach meal planning, budget shopping, and may include going with them to shop a time or two to truly teach these skills.
• Childcare- Some of our women have children. There are childcare vouchers they can get, but it requires them to have a job first. In order to find a job, they need someone to watch their children. Once they get the voucher, then they have to find a childcare center that accepts the vouchers and that has an opening. It can take quite a while to find a center that has an opening. Finding childcare so they can work or attend special events for Hope and Vine is not only difficult with their limited network, it’s also financially straining or impossible. Having a network of already vetted, safe people to help with childcare is extremely helpful.

The following require training, plus an interview:

• Bible Study Leader/Co-Leader/Assistant- Some of our women really want to connect with others and grow spiritually. This bible study would more than likely need to be virtual as transportation and childcare can be an issue. Location and study would need to be approved by Hope and Vine
• Workshop Mentor- Some days we could use some extra hands in the workshop If you enjoy using your hands to make things and feel comfortable participating in conversation, this may be a great way to get involved.

Next Step Support

• Employment Partnership- Hope and Vine want to prepare our young women for success in the workforce! Stable employment with a living wage is vital to maintain housing, food, and education. We are focused on teaching them soft skills, like good communication with management, conflict resolution, punctuality, time management, etc. We are currently looking for employers who understand the needs of our participants and are willing to continue mentoring them through employment. By employing one of our participants full or part-time, you would be teaching them technical skills, helping to reinforce soft skills, and creating a relationship where they can learn and grow.

We strive to make Hope and Vine a safe place for young women to learn and grow into who God intended them to be. We do not expect our volunteers to be perfect, but we do expect them to be trauma informed. These young women have been through enough. The last thing we want is for them to be re-traumatized or hurt by Hope and Vine.

Volunteer Qualifications

All volunteers must have a heart to serve.

Volunteers in positions of direct contact with our young women need to be at least age 21, complete trauma-informed volunteer training and need to be

• willing to learn about trauma and what it means to be trauma informed,
• prepared to be patient,
• willing to listen more than you speak,
• nonjudgemental
• have a foundation of solid faith.

These young women do not need a savior; they already have one. These young women need a friend, someone to listen and witness their story, someone to talk through life with and learn from, and someone willing to help with the messiness of life.

It is important to remember that we work with young adults. We are not foster parents and we are not stand-in or substitute parents. We are not leading them through life, we are walking BESIDE them.