Mission Statement - Peace House Community (PHC) is a weekday gathering place to belong for economically challenged and marginalized women and men in the Twin Cities. PHC achieves its mission by offering services that nourish the community members' bodies; nourish our community members' souls, and enrich the lives of our visitors, volunteers and students. Vision - Peace House Community strives to build a supportive environment where the wounds of economic and social dislocation are mitigated by the establishment of caring relationships with one another as well as diverse volunteers.
The biggest change has been the loss of our volunteers. We only have three or four volunteers who feel safe coming to PHC, so we are not able to connect with and listen to our community members as we have in the past. This has made us more of a feeding/drop in center than a community center. We have seen that our community members still value the connections they have with each other and with the volunteers and are looking forward to being able to bring everyone together as we have in the past. The other big change is that we have partnered with Loaves and Fishes to provide meals on weekday evenings. L&F's lease at St. Stephen's School ended and they approached PHC about using our building. This partnership has ensured that the local neighborhood still has the resources it needs, and it has increased the impact PHC can have.
As the pandemic passes and we reopen our building, we will need daily volunteers (one weekday a week from about 9:30am to 2:00pm). Many of our current volunteers will not be able to return to PHC until the pandemic has completely passed, and others (up to 20% of our volunteer base) will not return due to declining health, caring for family embers or similar concerns. We need at least six volunteers each day to operate smoothly, and currently we can only count on about three volunteers a day to return.
Peace House Community is currently accepting new volunteers on a limited basis. Please contact call 612-870-7263 or email contact@peacehousecommunity.org.
We also are in need of donations of personal care items or monetary support. Information is on our website - CLICK HERE.
In November PHC installed heaters on its back porch to ensure it could continue hosting community members through the coldest days of the winter. We also put up plastic sheeting to shield the community members from wind and inclement weather. The community members have expressed both gratitude and admiration that we were willing to take on this expense and think far enough ahead on their behalf to have the heaters ready before the cold weather arrived. When we provided marshmallows for snacks one day, a community member roasted a marshmallow using the heaters.