National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week

National Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week is November 14 – 22, 2015. Held each year during the week prior to Thanksgiving, this week serves as a time when communities come together to raise awareness about hunger and homelessness and to advocate for change. It’s an opportunity for individuals and organizations to join voices with groups like the National Coalition for the Homeless (NCH), the National Student Campaign against Hunger & Homelessness, the Corporation for Supportive Housing (CSH), the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH), and many other organizations in their “Resolve to Fight Poverty.” At Foothold Technology, we proudly support customers and partners across the country who are working tirelessly each and every week in the fight against hunger and homelessness.

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Bill deBlasio announced his commitment to create 15,000 new units of supportive housing in NYC. We applaud those efforts and we thank the thousands of providers working to address homelessness around the country. While HUD reports homelessness continues to decline nationally, we know there is still much work to be done to address poverty, hunger, and homelessness.

As the week comes to a close, we extend our thanks to local and national organizations for their continued efforts to advocate for better programs, stronger communities and the availability of services. We would also like to extend a special congratulations to Foothold customer Bowery Residents Committee (BRC), for its recent selection as a 2015 New York Community Trust Nonprofit Excellence Award winner. It’s great to see this organization, like so many others, receive recognition for their efforts to address issues related to poverty.

What can you do to support the efforts this week and beyond? A few ideas:

• Educate yourself and others about the issues of homelessness and hunger. Start by viewing and sharing the educational videos on the NCH YouTube channel
• Visit the NAEH website to learn more about tools and solutions
• Join the conversations on Twitter using the hashtag #NHHAW
• Volunteer at your local food bank or get involved with local efforts

Homelessness and hunger are issues we take seriously. Not just because we provide software that supports agencies tackling these issues, but because it’s something that affects all of us, each of us, within our own communities.