Our Kitchen Makeover

Helping young people during a frightening and vulnerable time in their life is what DYS does.

In any given year, we provide hundreds of youth a safe place to stay while helping them find more long-term and stable housing solutions.  The kitchen in Joanne’s House, our emergency shelter, gets a lot of use and the resulting wear-and-tear was evident. We really needed a ‘kitchen update’, but we just couldn’t afford the additional expense.

That’s where the generous gift of $15,000 from BLT Construction Services and their Building Blocks of Hope fundraising campaign made a difference! Their gift was used to fund our emergency shelter kitchen renovation. This was a substantial project and the result is that our hardworking kitchen was transformed into a much more functional area.

Our renovations included new cupboards that maximized storage space as well as durable, easy to clean countertops. These improvements really brightened up the kitchen. We serve almost two thousand meals per year so every inch of additional storage space is appreciated!

Thank you to BLT Construction Services for selecting Durham Youth Services as the Durham Region recipient of their Blocks of Hope gift. Your gift is helping us keep our residents nourished and safe.

A staff member shows how much storage room our new kitchen cupboards contain.

Preparing lunch in our new kitchen.