Grant Will Help Shelter Provide Job Training Opportunities to Homeless

The Friends of Roy’s Foundation will use a $25,000 grant from the H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation to create a new training center aimed at helping homeless in the area become self-sufficient. 

The Coachella Valley Spotlight award, granted in July, will purchase computer workstations and a dividing system for the multipurpose room at Roy’s Desert Resource Center in North Palm Springs. The education facility will offer job skills training, household budgeting and more to help transition people from homelessness to permanent housing.

“This gift from the Berger Foundation will not only change the trajectory for homeless community members in need right now, but it will also help the Friends of Roy’s Foundation in one of its major goals, which is to secure Roy’s Desert Resource Center’s financial independence,” said Denise Welch, Chairperson of the Friends of Roy’s Foundation.

Roy’s Desert Resource Center opened in 2008. The emergency shelter was named after the late Roy Wilson, a Riverside County Superintendent and advocate for the homeless. 

Roy’s provides temporary housing along with support services for individuals and families that have found themselves in challenging economic situations. In 2012 Roy’s assisted about 800 men, women and children with shelter, meals, case management resources, job and housing placement and health services.

“Roy’s Desert Resource Center is giving people a hand-up rather than a hand-out, which falls in line with the Berger Foundation’s mission to help people help themselves,” said Christopher McGuire Vice President of Programs for the H.N. and Frances C. Berger Foundation.

Roy’s Desert Resource Center is a collaborative effort primarily funded jointly by Riverside County and the Coachella Valley Association of Governments (CVAG). The Center is working to be self-sustaining by 2017.

“Through awareness campaigns, the Coachella Valley Spotlight is geared at connecting people with the needs and resources in our community,” said Mike Stutz, General Manager of Gulf California Broadcast Company, which owns and operates CBS Local 2. “It seems appropriate, then, that Roy’s would receive this honor, as both the Friends of Roy’s Foundation and the Desert Resource Center are reconnecting our area’s homeless with the community.”

The Friends of Roy’s Foundation was featured on CBS Local 2’s “Eye on the Desert” as well as in public service announcements and on the www.cbslocal2.com website throughout the month of July. 

For more information about the nonprofit organization or how to help Roy’s Desert Resource Center, visit www.friendsofroys.com or call 760-459-4762.