Bridge of Hope SD

Bridge of Hope 2022Bridge of Hope is located in City Heights, San Diego which is one of the largest refugee resettlement areas in the country. Every week, hundreds of people come to Bridge of Hope for services as well as find community.Every week, donations come in from all over San Diego; clothing, furniture, household items, and food. We have a team of about 15 volunteers who work hard each week, sorting and organizing all the donations as well as prepare for those coming for services.Wednesday is a day where case workers throughout San Diego County make an appointment with us, for their client to come and pick out 2 to 3 pieces of furniture, items needed for their kitchen,bedroom and bathroom, as well as clothing and food. This day is only for those who are starting over with nothing; refugees, immigrants, people leaving homelessness, domestic violence, recovery, disabled, veterans, or any type of crisis. This is a one time appointment for those in transition.We serve up to ten families every Wednesday.Friday is our food distribution where we were served an average 240 families. It is Farmers market style service with a variety of food; produce, dry goods, dairy, meat, bread and fresh flowers. We have anywhere from 10-14,000 pounds of food available. All are welcome to come. We receive a large amount of food each week from Feeding San Diego, Trader Joes, Costco, Smart and Final, Walmart and Target.Every second and fourth Saturday is our Community Day where we open our clothing closet for those families needing clothing, and run a food distribution. In 2022, We saw an average of 80 families on Saturday. This is a day where families can also enjoy arts, crafts and games and hear about any upcoming events Bridge of Hope will be hosting.We had our annual backpack event serving about 125 children, Easter event serving about 150 children, and our annual Harvest Festival where we rented a jumpy for the kids, did arts and crafts and gave away costumes and a Community Valentines Day Party.Our annual Christmas Bazaar was a big success this year, serving 200 families. This is a day where different churches and businesses provide new toys for our Christmas Bazaar. We set up a store for parents to come and pick out two toys per child, wrap them there and bring them home for their children for Christmas. We have live music, share the Christmas story with our guests and make it a fun night of celebration for the community.We had two art and science clubs for the children again in 2022. One was a two day camp, the other was a three day camp. Kids did science experiments, art projects, played games and had a blast. We had about 30 kids join both times.When the Afghanistan crisis happened, many newly arrived families could not get to us for basic necessities so we converted our truck into a mobile clothing closet. Bridge of Hope and our volunteers set out to six different hotels over a 4 month period, and set up shop in hotel parking lots and welcomed the newly arrived refugee families to shop for clothing, shoes, toys, books, toiletries, and food.Bridge of Hope continues to have many faithful volunteers including individuals from our local community, and groups from TVIA, NCL, City of Refuge, Grace Church East County, GracePoint Church, Jesus Culture, The Flood Church, All Peoples Church, Beach Chapel, SDSU andmore.

We had our annual Nathan Adams Upton scholarship Award in the summer of 2022. We hadfive winners. Each winner received 1600.00, a laptop computer, computer case, and an Amazon gift card.