Do you remember what you looked forward to in a new school year? We recently had the opportunity to chat with Reign, a vibrant and enthusiastic four-year-old who started pre-k at our Decatur early childhood education center. Reign has attended Our House’s early childhood education program since she was two, and is looking forward to playing with her friends and making art projects this school year (especially art projects with shoes!)
Read more about Reign.
We are excited for students to fill our classrooms once again as we ring in a new school year! This year, Our House will serve over 200 children in its Early Childhood Education program and we can’t wait to share what we’re learning with you. Stay tuned for monthly updates from Our House and opportunities on how you can get involved with ensuring each of our students receive education to thrive.
Read the rest of our July 2019 email updates.
Our House, Inc. has been selected as one of eight United Way of Greater Atlanta partners to receive a Little Free Library sponsored by Publix Supermarkets. The media is invited to attend a presentation at Our House, located at 173 Boulevard NE, Atlanta, GA 30312, at 11:30 a.m. on Thursday, April 4.
Publix announced its 2019 philanthropy project at their recent Publix Retail Operation Conference. Publix associates collected more than 14,000 books and built 132 Little Free Libraries that local United Ways across Publix’s service territory will maintain.
“Encouraging others to read is important to us at Publix,” said Brenda Reid, manager of media and community relations for the Atlanta Division. “Reading can open new doors, stimulate the imagination and show our young people that the sky is the limit in what they can do and become.”
“As United Way of Greater Atlanta’s largest corporate campaign, Publix Supermarkets continues to show its investment in Greater Atlanta’s children, families and communities with the Little Library program,” says United Way of Greater Atlanta CEO and President Milton J. Little, Jr. “A student who is reading at grade level by third grade is significantly more likely to succeed in later grades and graduate high school on time.”
“Our House is proud to receive a Little Free Library courtesy of Publix Supermarkets,” said Tyese Lawyer, Our House President and CEO. “Making books accessible is an important part of fostering a love of reading in youth. We are excited to share the Little Free Library with the families we serve as well as our community.”
Our House provides shelter to live and education to thrive. The mission of Our House is to end the cycle of homelessness for families. For more information about Our House visit https://ourhousega.org/.
Atlanta History Center
130 West Paces Ferry Road NW
Atlanta, Georgia 30305
Click here to purchase tickets
Join Our House for an enchanting evening of gourmet food, fun and fantasy on Saturday February 9, 2019 at the Atlanta History Center. Guests will enjoy cocktails for a cause, amazing fare, live entertainment, and silent and live auctions to benefit families with children experiencing homelessness.
Our House is pleased to announce that Elizabeth Garvish will serve as the 2019 Cocktails & Confetti Dreams Gala Chair. Ms. Garvish is the founding and managing member of Garvish Immigration Law Group, LLC. Click here for more details
On June 12, 2018, the Our House Decatur Pre-K had a very special visitor. State Senator Elena Parent, District 42, came to spend time with our rising Kindergarteners. 
She read a few books to them and talked to them about transitioning to Kindergarten and how she would soon have a Kindergartener herself! Our House is so pleased to have continued support from Senator Parent and is so thankful that she took the time to share of herself with our children!
This spring Our House celebrated our volunteers with our first ever Volunteer Appreciation Event.
Our House recognizes the value that volunteers bring to our organization. They provide kitchen support at the shelter through weekly meal preparation activities. They perform needed facility tasks such as organizing donations and deep cleaning classrooms. They coordinate drives for needed in-kind donations. In addition, volunteers assist with administrative tasks including helping with data entry and with the preparation of mass mailings.
Volunteer contributions enable us to connect to our local community, conserve funds and provide metro Atlanta residents with opportunities to share their talents with others.
In our Early Childhood Education (ECE) program, they serve to enhance and enrich our service delivery model, and staff recognize the value of having helping hands contribute in the classrooms, special projects, and fundraising. Classroom volunteers regularly read to and mentor children in our ECE 
program, which allows teachers more planning time and more one-on-one time with children who need more individual attention. Many regular individual volunteers also come to hold and care for infants in the youngest ECE classrooms. Groups of volunteers come to sanitize toys and play areas in our ECE classrooms, which is vital to protecting the health and well-being of the children.
For the CDA Certification training program, volunteers are primarily used to provide training on specific job-finding skills such as interview etiquette, attire, 
and techniques. Volunteers also participate in the program to offer financial literacy training. Family Advocates work with community partners and volunteers to provide programming on topics such as nutrition education, stress management, budgeting, healthy parenting and healthy relationships to all parents, and also specifically to parents residing in the emergency shelter. At the emergency shelter, volunteer groups come to prepare meals for residents in the evenings and especially on weekends. Agency-wide, volunteers host drives for essential items such as diapers, wipes, 
and formula.
We celebrated our volunteers with treats and music. Tyese Lawyer, our longtime President and CEO, spoke about how crucial our volunteers are to our mission and thanked them for their dedication.
We were also able to give a special thanks to Miss Jeanne Merritt, our longest serving volunteer. Miss Jeanne has been
organizing our children’s clothing closet since 1994. Her generosity and dedication have been invaluable and extraordinary.
Volunteers at Our House assist in and execute many day-to-day activities and special projects, and provide meaningful and fun opportunities to our residents which they otherwise would not have. We are grateful for their willingness to serve.
Purple Pleazure is a social club in Atlanta that supports the African-American motorcycle club, Regulators. They recently decided that it was important to do more to support their local community. “It’s kind of been our initiative as a club to do more community service,” Eboni, the club’s Bus Manager, explained. In the past they have fed the homeless at a soup kitchen and participated in a sock drive. This year, they decided to get the Regulators involved and make it a year-long effort.
Sonya, the President of Purple Pleazure, wanted to provide Easter baskets as the organization’s service project this year. When she suggested it to Eboni saw the chance to make an even bigger impact. Eboni follows the Our House Facebook page and had learned about our 30 for the 30th campaign. When she explained to Sonya, the two of them decided to make it a year-long endeavor. They started collecting money from the Regulators riders and the ladies of Purple Pleazure, almost all of whom are mothers. Every month they have pooled their resources and donated $30 as well as bringing necessities for Our House’s 30 for the 30th item drive. They are making a collective decision to “bring everyone’s resources together,” and have been able to make a greater impact because of it.
Sonya and Eboni have been pleased with the impact the group has been able to make as well as how it has broadened the purpose of the organization. “We’ve made community service a requirement for the club. At some point you have to think beyond yourself,” Eboni stated.
If you or your organization would like to get involved with our 30 for the 30th campaign, please see more information here.
With over 350 guests in attendance, Our House’s 30th Birthday celebration, Cocktails, Confetti & Cake, generated close to $275,000 – 10% more than the goal!
The program started off with a welcome by the night’s emcee and advisory council member, Jovita Moore. Board Chair, Adele Gipson, introduced gala honoree, Stephanie Blank, and presented her with an award for her service and dedication to vulnerable children and her support of Our House.
After Blank’s remarks, Our House President and CEO, Tyese Lawyer, made brief remarks and attendees viewed a moving video presentation about the impact of Our House (view below). The live auction and fund-a-need drew spirited participation and contributed to the success of the evening.
Our House Board Member, Brendan Branon, had this to say about the event and our honoree, “Stephanie Blank was an inspiring honoree and speaker – her speech was a great call to action and I know resonated with our guests. Great way to start off 2018!”
Our House would like to extend a special thank you to our presenting sponsor, The Coca-Cola Company as well as all of our gala sponsors, patrons and hosts. We also want to recognize the Gala Chair, Emily Hertz, and the entire Gala Committee for their hard work.
Check out the Gala video presentation below:
Our House is pleased to announce the launch of our 30 for the 30th Campaign! In March of 2018, Our House will celebrate its 30th Anniversary. That’s 30 years of changing lives and building self-sustaining families. Throughout 2018 we’ll be asking our supporters to give one particular item a month with a goal of getting 30 of each item a month. In the alternative we are asking our supporters to pledge to give $30 a month for the year of our 30th Anniversary.
January – Size 5 Diapers
February – 9 oz & 5 oz Baby Bottles
March – Pull-ups
April – Disinfecting Wipes
May – Infant Supplies (Yogurt melts, puffs snacks, stage 2 fruits and veggies)
June – Baby wipes
July – Boys’ underwear (2T-4T)
August – School supplies (construction paper, crayons, safety scissors, paint, etc)
September – Exam gloves
October – Tissues
November – Hand soap
December – Paper towels
Michele Brown, lead Pre-K teacher at Our House’s Decatur location, is full of energy. With a ready grin and an engaging laugh, she seems perfect for the role of making learning fun for her students. And that’s her goal. She says her mission is to get her students to understand that “school is a fun place, learning can be fun.” She sits in her classroom surrounded by colorful selections of the children’s artwork, the Smart Board they use for lessons, and toys in bins labeled in both Spanish and English. She seems perfectly at home here in this sunlit classroom. But this teacher who seems built for the classroom didn’t start out planning to enter the teaching field.
Michele is from a small town in rural Indiana and started college at Kansas State with her major undecided. She took a variety of classes from a wide range of fields and didn’t think about education until a friend suggested that it might be a good fit for her because of what a wonderful mom she was to her young daughter. Based on that suggestion, Michele took an exploratory education class that had her in a classroom three days a week for 16 weeks. At the end of the class, the teacher she had been assigned to said, “You’ve got it. You know how to connect with kids.”
After that experience and finishing school, Michele realized that teaching was not so much a career as a calling. She said she felt called to work in low-income communities, especially with students who struggle with learning. “I’m going to be that teacher for all the kids who struggled, for all the kids who don’t get it, all the kids that weren’t straight A honor students,” she says, her face serious. She recounts her own experience in 11th grade where a math teacher belittled her in front of the entire class. “That’s why I teach. That’s why I do what I do.” She also has a special place in her heart for the children Our House serves; children from families experiencing homelessness. She says, “This is the greatest area where we can make the biggest difference.”
In her third year of teaching at Our House, Michele has taught Georgia Pre-K for a whopping fifteen years. And all that experience has paid off. This year, she was a finalist for Georgia Pre-K teacher of the year. It was a grueling process that included writing essays, submitting a video of her teaching a lesson, and participating in an in-person interview. Even though she made it through an intense competition and had her teaching skills recognized state-wide, she still makes it clear that the work she does wouldn’t be possible without Britney Michel, her assistant teacher and a graduate of Our House’s job training program. She refers to Britney as her co-teacher and says that they’re on the same page in terms of what they should be doing every day. “It’s like, let’s just go in, let’s do what’s best for the kids, make it fun for them, give them a great experience, so that they equate school with happiness and joy,” she says. Britney nods in the background while cutting out construction paper shapes for the day ahead.
When asked whether she feels like she has made a difference in the lives of the children at Our House, Michele is brimming with pride and success stories. She talks about a little girl whose mother didn’t even have her GED and how that same mom now has a GED, her trucker’s license and drives a bus for the DeKalb county school district. That little girl, “Deja,” is now in accelerated classes in elementary school. Then there’s the story of a little boy, “Moses,” who was living in a safe house with his mother and siblings after fleeing from domestic violence. Moses is now in kindergarten and his standardized test scores are the highest in the kindergarten school-wide. Michele acknowledges that it can be challenging to work with children who have experienced such trauma but is still filled with hope about their potential.
“They have to feel safe, they have to feel like you love them. [I]f they feel like you care, they’ll learn from you. So you never know which of these children may do great things. You gotta have that experience of someone showing you some compassion and love.”
And when she’s asked what she likes most about working at Our House, Ms. Brown doesn’t hesitate. “Our mission,” she says, followed by, “the families we serve.”
