Volunteer Application & Forms
Volunteer Opportunities at the Hope Center
Serve a Meal
The Jacobs Hope Cafeteria serves over 7,000 meals per month to clients housed in our Emergency Shelter, with dinner available to the general public as well. Our staff prepare and cook the meals and volunteers come in to serve those meals to our clients.
We serve three meals a day, seven days a week. The times for each meal are listed below:
* Breakfast: 6:30-7:30 AM weekdays, 8 – 9 AM weekends
* Lunch: 12 – 1 PM
* Dinner: 5 – 6 PM
Note: We can accommodate a maximum of 4-6 volunteers per meal service. Volunteers serving meals must be age 12 or older, and volunteers under 18 must be accompanied by an adult.
If you are interested in serving at the Jacobs Hope Cafeteria, please apply using the “Volunteer Application” button. Once approved, you will be able to login to sign up, reschedule and/or cancel shifts for serving a meal.
Share Your Expertise
Are you a personal trainer? Work in banking, food service, or a health service field? Do you have a special skill or some kind of training that may benefit the needs of our clients? Let us know!
Our recovery program clients attend life skills classes, which prepare them for successful independent living after they graduate. We have volunteers who teach a variety of classes, including personal finance, healthy cooking, anger management, meditation, and more!
If you are interested in leading a life skills class, please fill out our volunteer application using the button and we will connect with you. If you have questions about life skills, please email hopecenter@hopectr.org.
Make Sandwiches for the HopeMobile and Street Outreach Teams
The Hope Center’s Street Outreach Program and HopeMobile, which is an RV equipped for community outreach, is parked at a different downtown locations each weekday. We rely on the generosity of our volunteers to prepare the 50+ sack lunches that are distributed to people in need each weekday.
Sandwiches for the HopeMobile and Street Outreach Teams should be high-protein with no condiments, (we have packets of mayo/mustard that we give out with them so they don’t get soggy if we need to store them overnight). For example, you can do turkey or ham and cheese, or PB&J (if you do PB&J, let us know when you drop them off so they can be used first before they get soggy). Please place each sandwich in an individual Ziploc bag.
If you would like to prepare full sack lunches, feel free to include fruit cups, granola bars, beef jerky sticks, cookies, and/or individually wrapped snack items or crackers. You may also donate bottled water alongside sandwiches/sack lunches.
Sandwiches and/or lunches can be dropped off at our Men’s Emergency Shelter, 360 W. Loudon, anytime between 8 AM – 8 PM. You do not need to schedule your sandwich making time, just drop off donations when it’s convenient for you. There is no set amount you need to prepare, but we recommend starting with at least two loaves of bread worth of sandwiches. Thank you!
