6/17/2022 Foundry Giving Friday: Avenues For Youth - ConneQT Home

6/17/2022 Foundry Giving Friday: Avenues For Youth - ConneQT Home

Every Friday The Foundry Home Goods contributes 5% of our total sales to a different community-nominated small-and-mighty cause. In honor of Pride Month, all of our Foundry Giving Friday recipients for the month of June will be LGBTQIA+ organizations... next up:  Avenues For Youth - ConneQT Home.

Avenues For Youth is a Minnesota based nonprofit that partners with youth in Hennepin county experiencing homelessness.

"Just being Queer means you are 120% more likely to experience homelessness than your straight peers." - More info here from Avenue's for Youth on intersectionality, queerness, and how the simple facts of identity themselves can be the main vector for becoming unhoused. UGH. Like, ok. We get it, but make it make sense.

Avenues For Youth's ConneQT Host Home program, gives youth in need of housing—with a specific focus on LGBTQI+ youth—the power to decide where they live within their community. In their own words:

ConneQT is a host home program that provides LGBTQI+ youth culturally responsive housing within their community of choice. In ConneQT, youth choose which community member they live with and those community members provide housing and food. We know that the concept of sharing resources and taking care of each other is nothing new to queer and trans folx. It has been a cultural practice for many other communities who experience oppression and violence. We want to grow our community of hosts, and strengthen connections with those in community who are already supporting youth through sharing their homes.

YES. Avenues For Youth has supported young people ages 16-24 for over 25 years, providing stable housing, building trusted relationships, and partnering with each human on an individual level to advocate for (and working together building the skillsets to advocate for themselves) in navigating education, career, health and wellness, and housing goals. A house is a house and food is food and humans require those, baseline, for survival. And yet...we also see Avenues For Youth adding these necessary additional layers of support— inclusion, belonging, community, safety, and agency—in addition to the crucial basics, and we are here for it.

If you don't need anything from us, please consider donating directly to Avenues for Youth here. If you do find yourself in need of fresh linens or anything else to make your own zone feel like home know that your purchase goes to support good change happening on the community level.

Thanks to Anna for the nomination!

If YOU have a worthy cause to nominate for our Foundry Giving Friday initiative, pop on over to our Nomination Page and drop us a line. We're all in this together.

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