Day Shelter and Food

AHM is open every weekend of the year, serving over 34,000 meals to more than 2,200 people. Our Weekend Day Shelter is a community gathering place where needy families and individuals can stay all day, have good food and have access to community resource information.

Advent House Ministries, Inc. (AHM) provides food, shelter, housing, education, and employment assistance to those struggling with poverty and homelessness in our community. The core program at AHM is our Weekend Day Shelter, which includes the Children and Family Program. The mission of this program is to improve the daily lives of children and families through community engagement, recreation, and learning opportunities that build on the strengths of character and purpose gained in their experiences of working through poverty. Our core program is the Weekend Day Shelter, from which all other of our programs have developed. This past year we provided over 34,000 hot meals, as well as a safe and healthful day shelter, for 2,203 persons (this includes 589 homeless and 1,614 non-homeless individuals). We served 505 children, 114 veterans, and 287 elderly. In addition to food, we provided over 600 personal needs bags. On Christmas Day we served more than 550 persons with meals and day shelter, as well as providing each child with an age-appropriate gift and each adult with a sweatshirt, hat and gloves. Because our Weekend Day Shelter is open during times when other services are unavailable, this program provides a stabilizing service to those most at-risk in our community. The Weekend Day Shelter Program meets the basic needs of food and day shelter, as well as other services that build life skills. The program serves those in our community who face serious on-going challenges to gaining stability, as well as those who have more recent loss of resources and need only assistance with food. Other AHM programs provide literacy tutoring a, employment assistance to those re-entering the community after incarceration, and case management to families/individuals in permanent supportive housing/transitional shelters. AHM provides the environment and tools (including food, day shelter, education, and employment assistance) essential to setting goals and achieving stability.