Community Teamwork continues to serve the community during this pandemic. We are so proud of our staff who is working tirelessly in our community, especially the staff of our
Housing & Homeless Services, who provide services fo
r over 102 homeless families in Greater Lowell and over 200 housing unstable youth. This support helps both those that can isolate and those that are living in congregate situations.
Housing and Homeless Services Update
Our Housing and Homeless staff are disciplined about following sanitary codes and CDC guidelines at all of our sites. We continuously educate all our families about safety and social distancing protocols.
We are providing meals - especially to our congregate shelters to help with the cost of food, and to prevent our families from going out and putting themselves and our staff at risk.
We have stepped up our outreach mobilization for additional housing and are actively reaching out to housing providers and owners to procure emergency sites, as well as longer term housing to ensure people can isolate as quickly as needed. We are providing hotel rooms and apartments for those who need isolation.
If you are a landlord or know a landlord who would like to work with us, please reach out to us as soon as possible.
Unfortunately, like most organizations, we have limited access to testing but we are following the CDC recommendations and pursuing testing for those who meet the criteria. We are in daily communication with the Lowell Department of Health, Lowell General Hospital and the Lowell Community Health Center to discuss our shelter families and staff needs.
Our
Youth Opportunity Center at 167 Dutton Street, Lowell, is open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, 9-12pm by appointment only. The center is open to provide basic living needs such as showering, laundry and food. In addition, we are keeping in touch with our more than 200 youth through social media, telecommunications and delivering groceries to our youth in need.
YouthBuild programming continues. We have set up distance communication and learning so that our students can continue studying for their Hi-Set and work on their Construction or Culinary skills.
To ensure our shelter families have access to technologies for their children to continue schooling, Community Teamwork has provided tablets and activity packs to these families as well as our Early Education and Head Start families. Our Early Education staff is sharing virtual enrichment programs and educational resources to our shelter families as well, to our families delight.
Through our Emergency Response to the Covid-19 health crisis, Community Teamwork has already spent more than $250,000 on supplies across the organization - including meals and toiletries for our Shelter, Head Start and Early Education families, in addition to meeting the general needs in our community. Unfortunately we expect this need to grow substantially in the months to come.
We are continuously fielding calls and emails during this time of crisis as we continue to work both remotely and onsite (by appointment only), as we monitor our shelters 24/7 and our
Resource Center
,
8:30am - 4pm each day
.
