Heading Home Volunteers

This is my seventh year working with Heading Home. My students in the community service club all agree that their favorite volunteer event is cooking meals for Duley House, one of Heading Home’s housing programs for adult individuals. Over the years, we’ve cooked meals on-site, and we even made a video about our experience for the BB&N website in 2015. Duley House feels like family to me. It is always a treat to drop-off off meals and chat with the staff and residents. We’ve created winter gift packs and/or activity kits for clients. My students love shopping for presents at Target, and I love concrete giving. This year, my own family created a Heading Home for the Holidays Basket, and my four-year-old enjoyed choosing presents for a child her age. Each night after lighting the Hanukkah candles, my daughter added a present to our Heading Home basket. She knew that these presents were for “friends who didn’t have a lot of presents or warm clothes.”

This is the first year, I’ve coordinated large-scale volunteer opportunities. In October, 80 seventh graders visited 3 Heading Home sites for our first-ever BB&N seventh-grade Day of Service. It was an absolute pleasure to work with the Heading Home team. They helped inspire and coordinate a meaningful day for students and teachers. Together we created snack packs, made meals, decorated for Halloween, and organized food and clothing donations. The 8th graders were jealous of our project, so they decided to visit sites too. We’re currently running a canned food drive for Heading Home, and we’re gearing up for Heading Home to visit BB&N in February. Seventh-grade students and teachers are delighted to reconnect with Heading Home and learn more about combatting homelessness.

I am truly wowed by the incredible work that Heading Home does to combat homelessness, and I am grateful for the opportunity to volunteer for such a wonderful organization.

Thank you!  

Zoe

7/8 English Teacher

Middle School Service Learning Coordinator 

Buckingham Browne and Nichols School