Companion Animal Program

Our Companion Animal Program was created to serve the needs of two lives with one gift of gratitude. We serve two lives at once both depending on each other’s survival. Two souls existing in tandem, providing love, hope and life to each other as they continue their resilient lives.

Established in 2017, inspired by long-time volunteer Casey Walden, we have taken care of 2500 sets of companions with our Companion Animal Kits (HL), full of food, treats, toys, grooming aids and items that bring joy that was previously out of reach. 5000 lives boosted with love and more hope to persevere.

And the kits can be lifesaving. Many shelters will deny a bed to an owner with an unleashed animal. Each kit has multiple leashes and collars.

Our Founding financial sponsors, Michelson Found Animals Foundation, have generously funded several curated educational initiatives to express and validate the power of the human-animal bond in creating purpose and value in each precious companion.

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Women+Girls Initiative:

Launched in 2020 in tbe midst of a pandemic our Women+Girls Initiative identifies and serves the unique needs of unhoused women and girls, who represent a particularly vulnerable segment of the unhoused population.

Women and girls often struggle to find support and resources catered toward them, and constantly face the risk of violence, sexual assault, trafficking, and more. Many hide from view – both from those that want to serve them and – even more tragically – from the number of lurking predators who hunt them and their children.

Our Health+Personal Care Kits (HL) address the unique hygiene, personal care, sanitary and beauty needs of those that identify as women and girls on the street. We babe

Each Spring around Mother’s Day we depend on sponsor partners to fund our New Baby Program to provide vital aid and supplies to newborns and their unhoused mothers. We have served hundreds of new babies throughout Greater Los Angeles with the help of our tireless agency partners (HL). Each kit contains XXX for the urgent health, safety and hygiene needs of vulnerable baby and Mom.

Each of the Initiative’s Learning Experiences deep dives into the complex challenges and misinformation that uniquely plagues our unhoused women, girls and mothers and their babies – often spiraling them into circumstances very hard to overcome without true understanding and dedicated resources.

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LAUSD Homeless Students Program

Annually Los Angeles Unified School District (LAUSD) teach over 20,000 students who self-identify as homeless. Factoring in the 25-30% who for obvious reasons go unregistered the number quickly approaches 30,000. Astonishingly, 70% of those same students graduate!

When you consider that challenges that these students and their families face to simply survive, it reflects their collective will to “learn their way out of poverty.”

Our LAUSD Homeless Students Program supports unhoused K-12 students by providing them with resources and support to assist in their resilient path to ultimately finishing their education. Our Essential Learning Kits are curated with a “must-have” list from LAUSD as well as hygiene and personal care items for the students and their families.

We recognize that young people living in poverty have an opportunity to “learn their way out” and create stable, thriving lives for themselves and their loved ones.

Through the efforts of our ‘23-24 Youth Council cohort we supplied 40 graduating unhoused seniors with brand new Lenovo laptops to replace their old Chromebooks that they are forced to turn in. And with the sponsorship of generous sponsors we will be supplying 3000 K-12 students and their families returning for the ’24-25 academic year with new portable 4GB hard drives. These are not only vital for their studies but will allow their families who are consistently vulnerable valuable portable document storage hardware.

We continue to explore other material ways to impact the lives of our future with LAUSD. After all, doesn’t it make sense to invest in their futures as early as possible to proactively lift them out of poverty?

Our educational programming focuses on the myriad of challenges facing these students and the success stories of those that are thriving and provide invaluable insight on affordable and practical solutions.

Program-to-date students and families served in this program = 8,000 

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Universal Care Program:

Our Universal Care Program is the cornerstone of our organization. When Tom,
Amy, Bambi and Mary reached out to support those first 40 lives in 1999, their goal remains the same 25 years later. Give individuals who have nothing the essentials they needed to “survive where they stand.” 

 Our Universal Care kits have up to 75 different items to allow an individual and/or families survive for from 60-120 days if they are down to zero. Nutrition, hydration, hygiene, personal care, communication devices, first aid, clothing to keep them dry, warm and clean, protective weather gear, tarps, socks etc. Staying clean for work or school, prepping for an interview for a job or a bed, needing to feed yourself and family, need to prevent disease, infection, illness and death, prevent dehydration, hypothermia, sun stroke? We are here to help.

 Our seminal public-facing December event, it is the biggest volunteer event around the holidays.

Grandkids are third gen Giving Spirit vols. Families plan their events around Outreach Week. Thousands gather to serve thousands all over the Southland. However, our volunteer numbers and sponsor numbers are way down. Will join/rejoin us this December? Please give generously.

 Our founder is a former journalist who started The Giving Spirit to learn Why? How does this exist and at this depth surrounded by abundant wealth and resources, he asked in ’99. We began our educational journey immersively which progressed to our current slate of robust curated multi-platform Learning Experiences.

 Learn with us. Join us in the streets. Please give so we can serve more!

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Youth Council Microsite Content (Programs Tab)

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Our Mission

Founded on March 18, 2021, The Giving Spirit Youth Council is composed of Greater Los Angeles youth leaders who are committed to service, invested in the alleviation of poverty in Los Angeles and devoted to the mission of The Giving Spirit to play a role in this City’s greatest humanitarian crisis. Our young leaders represent a community of Angelenos – their neighborhoods, their families, their respective schools, and their peer groups – that have a genuine passion for service and embody principles that transcends the boundaries of LA.

We lead in educating our peers on why homelessness is a symptom of the macro societal issues that challenge every community in our City and County. We focus, address and confront the factors attached to the unhoused. We believe that these issues play a key role in unpacking and unveiling the systemic inequalities that are the tragic pillars of poverty and homelessness.

We believe that taking responsibility within our own communities for inequitable conditions is crucial, as one of our core values is empathy — empathy for all of our neighbors, empathy for those whose voices are not heard, and lives forgotten or devalued – which need to be understood as much or more than being lifted up.

We must collectively understand what it means to take responsibility for the welfare of ALL of our neighbors. #theyareus

The Youth Council is a powerful testament to The Giving Spirit’s commitment to engage, integrate, learn from and “lead with our future”. The organization looks to our youth leaders to offer perspective on strategy, policy, initiatives, narrative, positioning and problem solving.

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