Teen Feed

Teen Feed works with the community to offer support to meet basic needs, build strong relationships, and ally with homeless youth as they meet their future off the streets. With the tremendous support of the community, Teen Feed responds to the most basic needs of homeless youth through FOUR main programs: Meal Program, Support Coordination, Healthcare Access Coordination, and Street Outreach.

Since 1987, Teen Feed has tailored its services to the hundreds of homeless youth and young adults (YYA) between the ages of 13 and 25 who frequent Seattle’s University District. As the threshold social service agency for many homeless YYA, our mission is to offer support to meet basic needs, build strong relationships, and ally with youth as they meet their future off the streets.

The Teen Feed meal acts as an axis point for homeless and street-involved YYA to connect with the supportive services they need to achieve stability. Teen Feed works to meets the needs of YYA through four integrated programs:

1.      Teen Feed Meal Program: The Meal Program provides homeless youth with nutritious food, respite, and support at three locations: Seattle's University District, Auburn, and Rainier Beach. Over a warm meal, staff and volunteers link youth with the resources and services they need to achieve stability.

2.      Support Coordination: In complement to our Meal Program, our Support Coordinators work to provide crisis intervention services (referrals to shelter, warm clothing, bus tickets, family reunification) and to meet basic needs like mailing addresses, help obtaining a state identification, employment referrals, housing, and more. 

3.      Healthcare Coordination: In complement to our Meal Program, our Youth Access to Care (YAC) Healthcare Coordinators help homeless youth actively participate in their wellness, make positive choices, and optimize their health and well-being to achieve stability. Our Healthcare Coordinators enroll youth in healthcare services and help them to find and build positive relationships with care providers.

4.      Street Outreach: In complement to our Meal Program, our Street Talk Outreach Program (STOP) proactively and preventatively reaches out to the most isolated homeless youth to address and reverse the negative impacts of street-life. STOP does this by connecting with youth in their own environment—the streets, alleys, and parks where they hang out—even before they are willing to approach adults for help and offers them warm coffee, granola bars, new socks, the nightly meal schedule, and support service information. 

In 2014, Teen Feed:

• Opened its doors to 40 – 70 youth each night
• Offered over 21,700+ nutritious meals to hungry youth
• Connected with over 900 individual youth in need
• Worked with over 750 volunteers from various community, corporate, and faith groups
• Leveraged over $300,000 in donated food, basic needs items and related in-kind contributions
• Provided one-on-one support coordination for 385 youth, providing a mailing address and help with a state identification, employment, healthcare enrollment, housing, and more.
• Met the basic needs of youth in need in Seattle's University District, Auburn and Rainier Beach areas.