It’s being reported in the Ypsi Courier that, given the current funding situation at Ozone House, the non-profit will be cutting the hours of operation at its youth Drop-In Center and reassessing program offerings.
According to their website, Ozone House is “the only agency in Washtenaw County that provides free, confidential, and voluntary shelter and support services to runaway, homeless and high-risk youth ages 10-20 and their families.”
Here’s a clip from the article.
…The Drop-In Center will close Dec. 23 and re-open Jan. 23, with a different focus and possibly a new name, (Executive Director Katie) Doyle said.
Ozone House staff said they would like to see the hours stay where they are now, or even expand, but it is not feasibly possible with the current budget.
“This is not something that we want,” Director of Youth Development Colleen O’Brien told youth at the center Monday.
“This is what we can do versus closing,” she said.
The yellow house, at 102 N. Hamilton on the corner of Pearl Street, will remain a resource center and safe, positive environment for young people.
Area youth can still drop-in at the center during the new hours of operation.
With the help of Food Gatherers, and other partners and donors, Ozone House will continue to prepare meals and provide basic needs support, including access to laundry machines, showers, phones, computers, employment training, case management and life training skills services.
The new proposed schedule includes weekly skills training sessions from 5:30 p.m. – 7:30 p.m. and monthly social events like open mics or movie nights…
As I understand it, up until now, the Drop-In Center was open from 4:00 PM to 8:00 PM on weeknights. The new 2012 hours will be weekdays from 4:00 PM to 5:30 PM.
Ozone’s Queer Zone program, from what I’m told, will continue to take place on Friday evenings, from 6:30 PM to 8:30 PM, but it could move to a different day/time in the future.
[note: As 40% of homeless youth are LGBTQ and Ozone House provides services in a way that is inclusive and supportive, some people think of it as a “gay” no-profit. Queer Zone, however, is their only program which is directed at LGBT kids.]
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ozone House, and the services they provide for at-risk youth, I’d suggest checking out our recent interview with Ozone House youth specialist Quinn Phillips.
Donations to Ozone House can be made by clicking here.
update: I just received the following from Quinn, in response to a question I’d asked about the possibility of a Drop-In Center name change.
The name could change because the focus will not be on “drop-in” services. “Drop-In Center” refers to a place where youth can hang out after school in a safe but less structured environment. They could choose to become involved in other services we offer, or just get a free meal and have somewhere warm to go. We will no longer have that four hours of “drop-in” time, but the other services (meals, case management, referrals to our emergency shelter) will still be available.
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But Mark, don’t you know? Gays are lesser beings because of their craven choice to resemble females (who are all one step from ‘playing the whore’), and the Bible says that you can’t suffer gays or witches to live, they are unnatural abominations and shall ‘surely be put to death’. Mark, in order to promote our religion’s natural superiority because of its infallible Truth, we must allow our caring, God fearing populace to force homosexual children into desperate lives of drug addiction, chronic homelessness, and the unbelieveable horrors of prostitution by “not tolerating that homo shit in my house”. Its the only way they’ll learn not to mock God’s own America. The land of the free Maynard, get with it or move to Canada.
But I thought, if we allowed the rich to keep more of their money, they’d step up their charitable giving.
Once non-profits get out of the way, and these kids realize that they need to take responsibility for themselves, they’ll go out, get jobs, buy big houses, and everything will be better. We just need to allow the free market to take over.
I’m sorry this got kind of lost beneath the Ron Paul thread.
Thanks to those of you who have been sharing it on Facebook.
I agree with anonymous, we should ALL have the right to live with our own choices no matter how fucked up they are. FREEDOM!
I just wanted to point out 1) that the last “Mark” wasn’t me, and 2) that Anonymous was being sarcastic.
Money is really essential in making things work out especially to non-profit agencies who depends upon funding from donations. I do hope that there will be more people supporting agencies that functions for the welfare of our at-risk youth.
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