On Wednesday evening, December 10th youth, mentors and volunteers joined at First United Methodist Church in Fort Collins for a Christmas Party hosted by Steppin’ Out.

Thanks to Steppin Out, the Fellowship Hall at First United Methodist was festively decorated and plenty of tasty food was available for all. Thanks to a generous community, every one of the youth in the Matthews House program received not only a gift card, but a gift bag of goodies to open. For more pictures, come visit our blog

Thanks to the incredible generosity of an anonymous donor and the smaller gifts of several supporters, the Matthews House recently became the proud owner of a gently used white 15-passenger van.

Most of the youth we work with have few transportation options and in order to allow them to take full advantage of activities and services offered at the Matthews House we frequently serve as a source of transportation. In the past we relied solely on staff and volunteers to use their own vehicles to pick-up and transport youth. But the addition of our new van is already saving us money by reducing the number of trips needed and the mileage costs, allowing us to redirect money saved back into our program. And we’ll be sure to have room for all the youth who want to participate in future programs.

This year on Make a Difference Day in Larimer County, more than 3,500 people gave their time and energy to help 90 local nonprofit organizations and agencies. That’s 14,336 hours of volunteering, worth over $279,000, in just six days!

Here at the Matthews House we had 3 groups of wonderful people join us from Mountain View Church, First Baptist Church and Summitview Community Church. They spent the three days with us finishing construction on our storage shed, painting our fence, sprucing up the paint on the house and landscaping the yard. Its an important piece of our mission that the youth in our program always have a homey place to spend some time, so we owe a huge thank you to all our volunteers for making sure the house stays welcoming and comfortable.

A very big thank you also to Lee Smith and FlatIron Steel in La Salle for donating all the steel and the majority of other materials needed to construct our storage shed. This was a huge gift and without it, we wouldn’t have a shed today.

Some of our volunteers even made the United Way home page.