Dear Friend,

This is Kay Moshier McDivitt, Senior Technical Assistance Specialist at the National Alliance to End Homelessness. My team, the Center for Capacity Building, works one-on-one with communities across the country to help them implement best practices for ending homelessness.

I’m reaching out today to share with you a little about our efforts, and how your support has helped us work to keep vulnerable people safe. Another year spent in a pandemic has meant another year pivoting, adjusting, and amending the way we work to better serve the needs of our community. Last year I shared with you that we launched our first-ever online training platform, the Center for Learning (CFL). When the pandemic started, the newly-introduced Center for Learning meant that homeless service providers across the country had uninterrupted access to trainings and resources to enhance their ability to serve people experiencing homelessness.

This year, the Center has remained integral to how we work. In fact, your support has allowed us to expand this tool to better meet the needs of the homeless services sector.

We’ve added courses to help train providers in the Housing First approach, diversion, outreach, and updated some earlier courses. We also added CEUs (Continuing Education Units) to some courses to support providers in their professional development. And we incorporated the Race Equity Learning Series, which helps participants understand and confront racial disparities in their own communities. We are using CFL courses as supplementary materials for our community trainings as well.

We’ve also spent the year learning more about what it means to serve in an environment like this one.

Recently we closed out our first fully-virtual Rapid Re-Housing Learning Collaborative (in-depth, hands-on community training courses), with the Jacksonville, Florida community. This experience taught our team a lot about optimizing virtual learning, and we will carry these lessons with us even as we move forward into a post-pandemic reality. We have partnered with communities to take our technical assistance and training virtually across the country this year, including in Connecticut, Idaho, Tucson, southwest Florida, Colorado, and in Washington, DC!

Looking forward, our team is poised to start planning for in-person training sessions in the coming year, and we couldn’t be more excited! But with your support, we’ve learned that a hybrid structure is also possible. This will allow the flexibility for the Alliance to work with more communities than ever before.

As unprecedented times continue to be the status quo, we are steadfast in our commitment to our neighbors without homes. We have seen firsthand the tenacity and passion of community leaders, service providers, and stakeholders to take care of vulnerable people and get them housed, and we share their enthusiasm. Thanks to support from allies like you, we’ve been able to learn new ways to support communities in their work, better positioning our team to meet the needs of homeless service providers during these shifting times.

Your continued commitment makes it possible for our hard work to continue.

Please consider partnering with us this holiday season to help end homelessness.
 

Sincerely,

Kay Moshier McDivitt
Senior Technical Assistance Specialist, National Alliance to End Homelessness