Greg Bobby, Owner of The Zone accepting a Community Partner Award from Joyce Dickens, Resource Development Director and Kristina Maxwell, Transition Facilitator

Over the past 5 years, The Zone Health & Fitness has graciously allowed The Matthews House to enroll our youth at a greatly reduced rate. The ability to regularly workout at a gym offers our young adults many benefits, not only in terms of increased physical health, but also in the areas of self-confidence and setting and achieving goals. The opportunity for physical activity in a safe environment also provides our youth with a positive way to spend time and energy. Not only has The Zone given us a great deal for our youth, but they’ve also allowed our mentors to accompany their mentees, so they can work out together, making this opportunity not just about getting in shape, but also about building positive relationships as well.

The Zone has a great facility, friendly staff and excellent rates – probably the best hidden deal in the Fort Collins health club world. (You’ll find them nestled in behind Discount Tires on College, just North of Stuart Ave.) If you need a place to work out, I’d recommend checking them out.

During that period, customers buying bags of coffee from their shop (located at 749 S. Lemay A-2) can select one of the chosen charities, I recommend The Matthews House, as recipient of a portion of the sale. $1 of each 12 oz. bag and 50 cents of each 4 oz. bag will be donated to the nonprofit of your choice!

Here’s a chance to take care of that coffee lover on your Christmas list or buy some beans for your New Years brunch and help local youth this holiday season.

Every year, our Whole Foods Market does this great thing called Grab and Give. They offer their customers the opportunity to help their neighbors who are short on food. They do this by asking everyone at the checkout if they’d like to donate a meal to someone who needs it.

That money gets collected, turned into food and donated to a different local charity each week. This year, our Fort Collins store had the ambitious goal of raising over $100,000…and they made it! Then they turned all that money into tons (literally) of healthy food for our community.

The Matthews House was lucky enough to receive the donations from Thanksgiving week. Below you can see us with $13,000 of tasty, well-balanced, healthy food loaded into 2 pick-ups, a 12-passenger van and a few cars – there was barely room left for the drivers.

A lot of people are going to eat this holiday season and beyond because of you!
Thank you so much!

Saturday, June 19, 12-4, Rolland Moore Park

All Proceeds Benefiting The Matthews House Event

Presented by Veritas and Sponsored by The Wright Life.

Complementary Food Provided by Mama Roni's Pizza.

Tournament Rules:

• 7-12 person Co-ed teams, ages 13-18
• Double Elimination,
• Standard Ultimate Frisbee Rules
• Prize for the Winning Team: Gift Certificates to the Wright Life 

Registration Fee: $5 Pre-registration. $8 Day-of-event Registration More info and registration on event Facebook page

Here is a note from our Executive Director and Founder, Jerri Howe, talking about how we're going to do that, and how you can help.

Greetings from the Matthews House,

Many of us are aware that we have youth in our community living in unsafe places. They have little or no family support. This tragedy was highlighted just last week when we were called to provide a safe place for an 18 year old girl who finally got the courage to leave an abusive situation with her stepfather. This young lady is too old for foster care and the abuse was not considered domestic violence. She has a 2 year old daughter so the only solution was for the 18 year old to go to a shelter and her daughter be placed in foster care. So not to bring more trauma to the situation by separating mom and child, we were able to provide temporary shelter through a host home until other arrangements were made.

Because we have seen an increase in homeless youth and youth lacking caring adults, we have decided to reach out to the community to build our Host Home program. We have engaged a part time director who has years of experience in community based alternative housing options for youth. We will be holding two information sessions. If you have an interest or know of someone who might, please plan to attend or pass along this information to others. As we have experienced in the past, when awareness for unmet needs is raised in our community caring individuals always step forward to help. Thank you for your consideration of attending or passing along information about these information sessions.

Joy to your day,

Jerri

A Matthews House Host Home provides transitional and emergency housing for youth. Stays may range from one week to 6 months.  As a Matthews House Host Parent, you will be trained and supported to take a young adult into your home and help prepare them for transition on their own.

Please join us for an Open House to learn more about becoming a Host Family.
Wednesday, February 3, 5:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
or
Thursday, February 4, 7:30 a.m. to 8:30 a.m.

Please RSVP today: Gkoenig@thematthewshouse.org
or call Gwen at #970.217.7273 or sign up here.

We have great needs in our community all year long and there are amazing gifts of generosity that happen every day.

However, at Christmas we get to see the generous spirit that I believe inhabits every one of us humans overflow. This season shows me what is possible, what we as individuals and particularly as a community are capable of. 

I am feeling deep gratitude to all those people who are inspiring me and encouraging us this Christmas at the Matthews House. Here are a few…

• Colorado Carriage and Wagon gave 15 of our girls an evening carriage ride, probably not an experience they would ever have had.
• Whole Foods Market, through the generosity of thousands of their customers donated $4,000 of food to the Matthews House, so much that we have been able to not only meet the needs of our youth, but share with other agencies and families we are connected to.
• The Shepherd of the Hills Quilting Group delivered 7 beautiful handmade few full-size quilts that we’ve passed on to youth in our program. They LOVE them!
• A book club that made food and hung out with the youth at our Christmas Party.
• Several volunteers who decided we needed holiday decorations in every room and then handmade and hung them.
• Crossroads Church who held a toy drive and provided toys for several of our youth who have little ones of their own.
• Dozens of people who provided gift cards so our youth could all receive a Christmas present, and
• Burn Longboards, a local company who put on an entire evening event to benefit the Matthews House.

This just scratches the surface of all the people and things we are thankful for this Christmas season. Yes, there are always more needs, more heartbreaking stories, but there are also incredible stories of hope and generosity – and that is what this season is about.

We are so encouraged by the compassion and support of our community.

THANK YOU ALL!!!

Periodically, groups from the community come alongside the Matthews House to plan and put on events for our youth. These are great, fun activities for our youth with the added invaluable benefit that they are done on a completely volunteer basis by people who share this community with our youth. No ulterior motives, no one getting paid, these are people who genuinely care about our community and our youth. This unconditional compassion has a huge impact on our youth. For them to recognize that there are people in their community who want to invest time in them not because there’s a monetary incentive, but because there’s a true belief in the value and potential of each individual regardless of past events or circumstances. This is incredibly powerful for many of our youth who have seldom had anyone really believe in them.

This summer, a group from Emmaus Road Church came to the Matthews House to hang out with kids and provide a BBQ meal. This group got to know some of our youth through conversation and some games of bocce ball.

We’d like to thank Andy & Amy Lucas, Marie Evans, Ken Snyder and Wendy Thompson from Emmaus Road for their time and compassion and of course the food they brought to grill out

Thanks also to the following Matthews House volunteers for adding a collection of sides and dessert to provide quite a nice spread of food for the afternoon!

Doreen Miller, Tina Morris, Linda Maher, Gail Follett, Cathy Rotman, Christine Christman, Kelly Mapes, Denise Thompson, Vickie Mitchell, Courtney Craig and Denise Birdsall