End Homelessness California DBA The Shower of Hope

In 2010, executive director Mel Tilkeratne founded Monday Night Mission, providing meals, human connection, and community engagement with people suffering from the homeless crisis on Skid Row. In 2016, Damián Mazzotta began volunteering and offered media support to help the foundation. By 2017, Mel and Damián recognized a widening gap in hygienic services for individuals experiencing homelessness. Utilizing their foundation of volunteers and partnerships with key community stakeholders, they established End Homelessness California DBA The Shower of Hope.

Currently, we are the largest mobile hygiene initiative in Los Angeles, providing more than 3,000 showers a month across 25 sites. We ensure that every unhoused guest can receive meals, clothing, hygienic resources, and, most importantly, case management.

In 2020, we launched Hope Housing to offer housing for community college students experiencing homelessness or housing insecurity and provide them a roof over their heads and programs to aid them in succeeding. Community colleges often represent the most immediate way to decrease the education and wealth gap. Sadly, community colleges' amount of attention and resources is substantially insufficient. We established Hope Housing and opened our first residence for seven ELAC students in the fall of 2020 in the city of Rosemead. The following year, we opened our residence in Long Beach to house 16 more students. We now have 29 students with us. Approximately 1/3 of students are members of the LGBTQ+ community, and nearly all are people of color.

Led by our student case manager and mental health partners, we help students understand how best to live & thrive independently. Within the program, our case manager meets weekly with each student to support their individual goals. The students are offered tutoring services and mental health counseling. More than half of our students utilize therapy services with a third currently enrolled in tutoring.

Our organization is always looking to create new partnerships in an effort to pilot new locations, programs or areas. Our Board agreed to invest unrestricted funding for this program. The initial investment of the unrestricted funds is now leveraged by multiple donations and grants that were won through the outcomes that the program is bringing for the students suffering housing insecurity. Currently the management team is working on sustainable funding for the Long Beach location.