Every Tuesday afternoon, Angala walks up the steps to the Bremerton Oasis Center and spends three hours talking and playing with teenagers. It’s not the average adult’s afternoon activity! But you can tell it’s her place. As kids roll by on their skateboards they exchange greetings with her, or walk up and start a conversation. Angala knows the kids, and they know her.
Angala has been volunteering at The Coffee Oasis for four years. After learning about the Oasis youth programs through a newspaper article she felt compelled to volunteer. “I just felt like, ‘I need to go do this.’”
Four years is a long time to volunteer! Consistency opens doors in youth’s lives that nothing else can. Angala shares how valuable, if difficult and intimidating, it has been to win trust in the kids’ lives. “When people are looking at volunteering they think, ‘I have nothing to relate with
So why push through to connect with teenagers every Tuesday? “For me, with these relationships with the kids, I want them to see their life does NOT have to be what it is right now. [For them] to see ‘You don’t have to keep living there. No matter what has happened to you, what people have done to you, it can change. You have the ability to change it.’”
Knowing people’s stories can be heartbreaking. Over the years, Coffee Oasis volunteers have been the listening ears and warm smiles that welcome in hurting youth. With those relationships comes a first-hand look at a hidden world. When asked what obstacles she has seen facing the kids she’s come to care for, Angala’s list is long and painful: drug use, being taken advantage of, lack of justice, mental health issues, abandonment. Speaking of one disabled young man she knows she says, “There’s nobody to defend him, to stop others from walking all over him. I see these kids and just want to protect them. So that is hard for me.”
No one could deny that youth homelessness is a BIG problem. Often it seems an insurmountable one. But volunteers like Angala are the bright lights in the dark weeks of many youth. “I can’t change everything. But maybe with the Coffee Oasis, maybe I can make a little bit of headway, so that this generation is different and the next one is different.”
Like Angala, our hope is that one relationship at a time, the cycle of hopelessness and homelessness will be broken in our kids’ lives. And each of us has a role to play in bringing that about. Thank you for standing alongside our youth!
Want to learn how you can volunteer? Click below to register for and attend our next Volunteer Orientation!
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