Who knew so much could happen in three hours.


** Skid Row Wednesday
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Yesterday my mother (our first LA volunteer) and I went to our first Wednesday at the ReFresh Spot in Skid Row. The ReFresh Spot is an amazing location funded by the mayor's office that provides 24/7 access to laundry, showers, wifi, water, bathrooms, and donated clothing and supplies right in the middle of Skid Row.

A few weeks ago, I visited and set up a weekly time for us to drop in and help get IDs. Today was our first day and I was excited slash nervous. I was thrilled to have a weekly spot in the middle of the part of my city that needs the most help to finally start really digging in to get IDs, but also nervous because our staff and volunteers are far, far more experienced and smarter about getting IDs than I am. I spent the hours before heading downtown grilling my staff about how they do it! What can I say? My inner Hermione comes out when I'm preparing. And by "inner Hermione" I mean all of me, all the time.

I had already had an interesting situation this morning. My contact at the LA Mission, an amazing organization that I was super excited to partner with, called with a tough case and I had to chat with my team about how we might get a birth certificate from Nigeria. I'll keep you posted on that one.

So with my Moleskine full of notes and mom in tow, I headed to ReFresh and settled into the little office they've given us, after setting my mother up at a welcome table in the front. She is as much of an extrovert as I am an introvert so this was really an ideal situation.

For the first 20 minutes or so we had no takers and I sadly Slacked with my staff about how I might better advertise our presence. But the staff at ReFresh are amazing and they made announcements and rounded up people who needed IDs and before we knew it we had a waiting list!

The first client I met with was an incredibly nice man from Los Angeles who was incarcerated for 32 years and now needed an ID to start his life over. The fact that he was born in California should have made it easy but the state requires that anyone seeking a birth certificate who doesn't have an ID has to get a notarized affidavit of their identity. I am in the process of becoming a notary (HUGE THANKS to the donor who is paying for a volunteer to become a notary as well!) but I'm not yet so we had to make arrangements for him to come back next week so we can take him to one. We also registered him to vote but he has to print and sign a document so next on my wish list is a portable printer so I can handle these things in one step. The biggest risk with all of the steps it takes to get an ID is that we will lose our clients whose lives are anything but consistent.

Next was a wonderful man who was born in Mexico but is a naturalized citizen. He needs a new Certificate of Naturalization to get his ID and I knew without looking that this would cost us $555. Why the government needs to charge this much to print out a form I will never know.

After these two gentlemen I worked with two women who both had real needs for IDs but also degrees of mental illness that made it difficult to decipher what was really true and what they thought was true. Both will take a little research from our team to determine who they are and how we can help them get the documents they need.

After three hours I had only helped four people, all of them took a significant amount of time. When I finally emerged from the office my mother had a long waiting list for next week. I am so happy that we are working to hire a field staffer and recruit volunteers, this was only our first day at our first tabling partner and it was a lot of work. The need is so extensive and the individual cases are so complicated that this may be the toughest city we have been in so far, but every single person I spoke to said "without an ID, I can't do anything", and that made every second of this work worth it.

Thank you so much for making it possible for us to do what we do, and happy new year.
Kat

Help Us Start The New Year Strong! ([link removed])

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