Growing Home: A Turning Point for Children & Their Families

When you hear the word "homeless", what is the first picture that comes to mind? For most of us, we never conjure the image of a young child sleeping in their family’s car overnight. Yet the reality is that the average age of a homeless person in the United States is nine years old. At Growing Home, where we house the homeless, feed families, and care for children, we are constantly trying to inform people about the types of crises that many families face every day right here in the suburbs of Denver. With the development of our agency’s new brochure, made possible through the use of our Adobe Reader software, which we received through Tech Soup, more and more people are realizing how many families are struggling right in their own back yard, and are taking action to help.

Growing Home has never had the intention of being the best-kept secret around town. With our new brochure, that will no longer be a problem. Since December, just five months ago, Growing Home has already experienced a myriad of positive new changes. Without our Adobe Reader software, we never would have been able to spread the message about the need in our community, or been able to explain our services to so many clients.

Since last year, our volunteer recruitment is up more than 100%. We now receive regular calls from local groups, from Girl Scouts to bible studies, who not only know about Growing Home, but who are passionate about our mission and about serving families in our community. We currently have over 1200 volunteers that assist with all of our various programs, something that was almost unimaginable a year or two ago.

Additionally, Growing Home is currently planning for the opening of the new Growing Hope Center, which will be a one-stop location for families to receive work force training, resource counseling, and various life skills classes. The center will provide us with the space to serve our clients in a professional environment, and enable us to serve more clients with new computers and new classroom space. The Growing Hope Center would never have been a reality without the new partnerships Growing Home has been able to develop in the last few months, partnerships that could have possibly never formed without a new, vibrant marketing tool. Adobe Reader allowed us to create that marketing tool, one that explains the heart of what we do.

One of Growing Home’s goals is to ensure that our clients are always treated in a professional, respectful, and dignified manner. As a result of Adobe and our new brochure, we are able to present a more mature image to our clients. Growing Home has been able to move to the next level, and provide our families with better, more professional services. We are now revising our rental assistance program to offer more money to families each month, and expanding our outreach to include a "Help Hotline" to assist families in crisis and point them to resources.

Thanks to what we have been able to achieve with our new brochure – new funding opportunities, increased levels of support for the families we serve, more programs to serve more clients – more families in our area can hopefully provide themselves with a safe, stable home.