{"id":100266,"date":"2018-04-20T20:43:11","date_gmt":"2018-04-21T02:43:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/successful-fundraiser-to-house-homeless-woman-inspires-campaign\/"},"modified":"2018-04-20T20:43:11","modified_gmt":"2018-04-21T02:43:11","slug":"successful-fundraiser-to-house-homeless-woman-inspires-campaign","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/successful-fundraiser-to-house-homeless-woman-inspires-campaign\/","title":{"rendered":"Successful fundraiser to house homeless woman inspires campaign"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Courtesy
Courtesy of Kyla Jenkinson<br><br>\u201cA Mile in My Shoes\u201d pajama party will feature the stories of homeless residents in Durango. The party at Fort Lewis College will also feature cocktails and dancing.<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Durango photographer Kyla Jenkinson raised enough money in three days on GoFundMe to house her homeless friend for three months.<\/p>\n

She launched the online campaign the day before Christmas Eve \u2013 after she learned her friend had secured housing but didn\u2019t have $300 for the deposit. She was doubtful anyone would have extra money to share during the holidays. But she reached fundraising goal overnight.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was sobbing,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The experience inspired her and several others to start \u201cA Mile in My Shoes<\/a>,\u201d an educational and fundraising campaign around the issue of homelessness. The yearlong campaign will start Sunday with a pajama party at Fort Lewis College. The event will feature an art installation focused on homeless residents in town, and the organizers plan to unveil a new online platform to help one homeless resident at a time.<\/p>\n

The campaign is meant to broaden the conversation in Durango from focusing on the location of the homeless camp to how the community can house the homeless.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt just takes some compassionate people to create that change and to realize that this community includes everybody in it, and we need to treat humans like human beings,\u201d Jenkinson said.<\/p>\n

Jenkinson is working with a handful of people to organize the event, including affordable housing expert Jennifer Lopez, who worked on homelessness across Colorado with the governor\u2019s office. The event was inspired by similar, successful events in Denver, Lopez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was light and fun and hopeful,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Over the next year, \u201cA Mile in My Shoes\u201d team plans to work on identifying gaps in services for the homeless and fundraising to fill those gaps, Lopez said in an email.<\/p>\n

They have had preliminary talks with existing nonprofits, such as Housing Solutions for the Southwest, and those groups are interested in partnering with the campaign to house and serve more people, she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe want this process to be a collaboration of existing nonprofit support systems, compassionate community members and businesses,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

The long-term goal is to raise money for large-scale housing programs and help bring in state and federal funding for housing.<\/p>\n

The federal budget has more funding for housing vouchers and affordable housing development than in the past, and Colorado has set aside some marijuana tax dollars for housing the homeless as well, Lopez said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are resources out there. We have to band together and go after them,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She believes over the next two years Durango has the opportunity to increase affordable housing options.<\/p>\n

For more information about the pajama party, visit amileinmyshoesscholarship.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\n

If you go<\/h4>\n

A Mile in my Shoes will host a pajama dance party that will feature art installations and stories about members of the homeless community in Durango from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Sunday at the Fort Lewis College Student Union Ballroom. Cocktails will be served at 6:30 p.m. At 7 p.m., a brief presentation about a yearlong campaign to address homelessness will be made. The suggested donation at the door is $5.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yearlong effort starts with party Sunday at Fort Lewis College<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":100267,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5736,5735],"tags":[408,611,453,409],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-100266","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local-news","category-news","tag-charity","tag-homelessness","tag-housing-and-urban-planning","tag-poverty"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100266"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100266\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/100267"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100266"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100266"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100266"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=100266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}