Friday, March 10, 2017

Making-It-Home Clients Pay It Forward

Making-It-Home’s mission is to provide a comfortable home environment to individuals moving from emergency shelter to new apartments.  We partner with local civic organizations, corporations and individuals who volunteer their time and transportation to get donated furniture where it is needed most.  Recently, two grateful clients volunteered to “Pay It Forward” and use their own muscle to make new clients’ apartments feel like home. 



Jason, an Army veteran, left emergency shelter, secured a new apartment in Hasbrouck Heights and enrolled in school to complete his Bachelor’s degree.  When we connected with him to discuss his furniture needs, he told us he was pretty strong and also wanted to volunteer for Making-It-Home.  Mike, another Making-It-Home client, also wanted to “pay-it-forward” after receiving furniture from the program in 2016.  On February 7th Jason and Mike arrived at the Westy storage unit ready to work.  They loaded furniture from the unit into our rental truck and traveled to Upper Saddle River to pick up some more.  From there, we traveled to Garfield and Hasbrouck Heights to furnish two apartments, and then returned to Westy to store the remaining pieces.  In total, our client volunteers moved 20 pieces of furniture, including 3 sofas, that day!    


Jason returned on Valentine’s Day for a full day of donation pick-ups!  He and another volunteer, Craig, collected 17 pieces of furniture from 4 homes throughout Bergen County, filling the truck to the top, and moved the pieces into our storage unit.   This furniture is now ready to distribute to future clients.




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