Looking Glass Community Services

At Looking Glass HYS, summer time is busy – the heat keeps our day use and overnight shelters busy with youth trying to keep cool and utilize resources. Station 7 is undergoing renovations to expand capacity - but we need more funding! New Roads is doing laundry - but we hope to do more! And important annual clothing drives are right around the corner - Braugust - Shoetember - Socktoberfest!

National Safe Place Week, which serves to raise awareness about the Safe Place Program (a national program which brings together youth service agencies, businesses, volunteers and other community partners to help youth in crisis) is March 16th through 22nd this year. In Lane County, Looking Glass Station 7 is the Safe Place program provider. Looking Glass partners with several area businesses and agencies including LTD, all Dari Mart locations, fire stations and more. There are three fundraising events during this week at restaurants to help raise funds for this program.

Employees from Moss Adams provided some community service helpers to various Eugene-area nonprofits on Friday, July 14th, including Looking Glass where they did some landscaping cleanup work at New Roads and Station 7.

The Youth Action Committee (YAC) is a group of homeless youth ages 16-21, who access services from New Roads, Station 7, or New Roads School. The group consists of 6 youth and are hoping to expand to 8-12 youth in the future. They meet once a month at New Roads School and are served dinner as part of the meeting.

One of the goals of the group is to provide feedback in how we serve homeless youth in our Homeless Youth Services at Looking Glass. They will provide input on how the program is running, what changes they would want, and what ideas they have for the community.

National Safe Place is a national program that provides youth with safe places to seek help 24-hours per day. Youth ages 11-17 can access any of the 68 Safe Place sites across Lane County identified by the yellow and black diamond-shaped signs.

On Saturday, June 27th, the day before the 51st anniversary of the Stonewall riots, Looking Glass Station 7 hosted a Pride celebration with Trans*Ponder and HIV Alliance. Youth and staff enjoyed a barbecue in the backyard while getting the chance to learn about these valuable LGBTQ+ resources in our community.

Our in-house grant writer shares her experience at the Family & Youth Services Bureau 2019 Grantee Training

Only 9% of sex traffickers who target youth (individuals who exploit youth by forcing them to engage in sexual acts in exchange for money, housing or other compensation) are strangers to those being trafficked. Over 90% of the time, the youth are being exploited by someone they know, and over 60% of the time, it is a family member or romantic partner. This sad statistic comes from Looking Glass’s dedicated Survivor Advocate (SA) staff member in a recent discussion about the challenges youth in Lane County face in the realm of sex trafficking. We won’t be using her name or photo in this article since her anonymity is important for a variety of reasons.

Employees from Eugene’s Levi Strauss office spent several hours at two Looking Glass locations as part of their Community Day of volunteering around the Eugene/Springfield area. Levi’s staff members helped improve landscaping at Station 7 and re-painted the interior waiting room at our Counseling annex offices on West 11th.

On Thursday, April 11th Looking Glass staff and supporters joined other thankful groups in acknowledging and celebrating the wonderful volunteer work being done at organizations around the county. Looking Glass was honored to have had two separate volunteers to celebrate with at the United Way Volunteer of the Year Celebration at Valley River Inn. New Roads instructor Steve Nastasiuk and two representatives from the Kappa Delta Alpha Lambda sorority were both nominated in their respective categories.