End of Year Updates!
Beautiful plants that were donated to the shelter!
Dear Trojan Shelter Community,
Happy last week of classes! As this school year sadly comes to a close, our current Executive Board members will be passing on the torch to our 2021-2022 Executive Board, who they have been working closely with over the past couple months through our internship training program.
Christina Yuan and Kirin Peterson will be taking over as Co-Presidents, Navyada Koshatwar will be the new Director of Finance, and Jacqueline Chen and Cassandra Liu will be your new Co-Directors of Resources. Sameer Ahmed will be taking over as the Director of Operations, Angelina Lim and Hudi Potash will be the new Co-Directors of Staff, and Michelle Li will be your new Director of Media. And finally, Kayleigh Hollum will be continuing her role as the Director of External Affairs and Gifts. The new Executive Board is extremely excited to take on these roles this upcoming school year!
At the beginning of this month, Trojan Shelter collaborated with the Green Ribbon Club, USC’s mental health advocacy, support, awareness, and service club on a combined general meeting. During this insightful meeting, all club members were given the special opportunity to participate in mindfulness activities, engage in mental health discussions, and learn about other useful wellness resources.
One of our residents just moved out last week, so Trojan Shelter is currently housing one resident. Our former resident was receiving support from a DACA case manager and is making substantial progress on her application. This resident has also been receiving case management support from Bruin Shelter at UCLA for the summer and plans on returning to Trojan Shelter in the fall. Our other resident has begun the intake process for a long-term shelter in Southeast LA County.
In other news, Trojan Shelter has submitted an application for USC’s Good Neighbors Grant Program, which awards one-year grants to various programs that focus efforts on USC’s university-community initiatives covering the arts, education, health and wellness, community safety, sustainability, and economic development. If we receive this grant, our proposed plan for the next semester is to have our volunteers create kits to pass out at our current tabling setup at the USC Village. The kits will include information on basic resources as well as hygienic goods. As the kits are distributed, our volunteers will ask our community members to hand them out to those in need when possible. Trojan Shelter has also requested funding for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion training for our volunteers.
Since this is the last week of classes, we have begun operations regarding move-out such as purchasing move-out gifts for residents and RA’s, conducting exit interviews, and performing general housekeeping measures. Kayleigh Hollum, our Director of External Affairs and Gifts, will be conducting exit interviews with the case managers in these final weeks of the school year.
Lastly, our current Director of Finance, Will Chen, and our Finance Committee have been running a donation table every other Sunday in the USC Village to collect groceries and monetary donations as well as spread awareness regarding the issue of college homelessness. Our last donation table was this past Sunday, where we received over 5 bags of groceries! If you are looking for other avenues to support Trojan Shelter, our residents, and our RAs, our Amazon Wishlist includes a list of items that would really help make our space a more comfortable home for our residents. It is linked down below! Donations can also always be made to trojanshelter.org/donate.
Overall, we would just like to thank you for your continued support throughout this semester, regardless of however you have chosen to lend your support to our organization. We are looking forward to updating you on Trojan Shelter soon!
Best,
Navyada Koshatwar and Michelle Li
Director of Media
For more information about Trojan Shelter, go to trojanshelter.org