By Andrew Kenney
After a local soup kitchen closed, Colorado College students launched a publication to nourish the area’s homeless community.
Three Colorado College students have put the words and art of homeless people in print—and in the hands of the 36,000 readers of the Colorado Springs Independent.
By Danielle Krolewicz
A new program helps Fort Lyon residents tell their stories.
On a campus three hours southeast of Denver in the middle of nowhere, men and women walk across the quad.
Before 2010, the campus was a prison. In 2014, Fort Lyon Correctional Facility was refitted as Fort Lyon Supportive Residential Community, run by Colorado Coalition for the Homeless.
Write Denver is a collaborative writing project hosted by Lighthouse Writers Workshop. It is an ongoing exploration of place that weaves together walking tours and writing prompts.
In October 2015, Write Denver partnered with the Denver VOICE for a walk exploring the theme of “Then and Now.” VOICE vendors joined other community members on a two and half mile walk that took us from Colfax Ave. to Cheesman Park to a community garden.
By Dear Denver | For more events, check out deardenver.net
Open Music Sessions with Natalie Tate
This First Friday, visit your community access television station for a live, intimate studio performance by Natalie Tate and a joke-telling set by a local comic. Additionally, there will be FREE food from Illegal Pete’s and cheap drinks. Haaaaaaaaay. This event is open to the public and located along the Santa Fe First Friday Art Walk.
By Linette Hidalgo | Photo by Sarah Harvey
Quiet and unassuming are two words that initially come to mind upon first meeting vendor Richard Moore. However, you will quickly learn that Richard is humorous, kind, thoughtful, and incredibly interesting to speak with. His life is a myriad of hands-on work experience: diesel mechanic, rancher, heavy equipment operator. This is a man who has worked hard and overcome setbacks and struggles.
By Andrew Kenney
The Springs Rescue Mission may serve 700 meals in a single day, but it only has two laundry machines—and no showers. Aiming to address a lack of daytime services and shelter beds in Colorado Springs, the mission is raising nearly $14 million and starting construction in 2016 to effectively double its capacity.
By Vicki Lynn Tenney, VOICE vendor
Winter is such a beautiful time of year!
It will be nice to see the mountains
and cities sprinkled with the magic
and beauty of winter.
By Sarah Harvey
The Right to Rest Act could reverse the decades-long trend toward the criminalization of homelessness in Colorado.
Denver Homeless Out Loud (DHOL), a group that advocates for the rights of people experiencing homelessness across Colorado, will reintroduce the Right to Rest Act in the state legislature this year—maybe even as early as next month.
Recycling mattresses is merely a vehicle for change for Spring Back Colorado Mattress Recycling. Re-integrating drug addicts and alcoholics back into society is its real business.
Since Spring Back’s establishment in August 2012, owner and founder Christopher Conway and his crew have recycled over 65,000 mattresses and box springs, diverting from landfills 1.4 million pounds of lightweight steel, 992,485 pounds of mattress ticking, 867,283 pounds of prime foam, and 328,130 pounds of plastic. And 57 drug addicts and alcoholics found a sense of purpose.
Eddie Maestas Park, also known as Triangle Park, is transforming. Some of the hands behind that transformation belong to those who have experienced homelessness.
The mission of RedLine’s Reach Studio is to give the power of self-expression to Denver’s homeless artists. Before it was re-imagined as a city-controlled public garden, Triangle Park was a popular resting place for many of Denver’s homeless. Now, it is a blank slate for self-expression for several formerly homeless artists through Redline Art Gallery’s Reach Studio. Reach artists installed four murals in the park in August, working from a P.S. You Are Here grant, a Denver city initiative.
Dirt Coffee: No, it’s not coffee for worms.
On Friday mornings, the Dirt Coffee truck can be found at 2303 E. Dartmouth Ave. The truck sits outside of the Joshua School, which serves students with autism spectrum disorder (ASD); some of those students may serve you coffee.
As EarthLinks enters its twentieth year of serving the Denver metro area, participants, staff, and volunteers are celebrating not only another bountiful harvest, but also the friendships blossoming within their community.
Bette Ann Jaster, OP (Order of Preachers), and Cathy Mueller, SL (Sisters of Loretto), started EarthLinks as an outreach program in 1996. They wanted to give people experiencing homelessness an opportunity to take nature trips, garden, and make arts and crafts. EarthLinks now has about 50 participants from around the Denver metro area.