On Friday a bunch of Microsofties went to Lambert House in Seattle, a resource for GLBTQ youth and their allies for the Day of Caring. Microsoft, along with a bunch of other companies in the area, encourages employees to spend a day volunteering in the community on a project that matters for them. I've supported Lambert House with donations for a while, but I had never been there before Friday. It was pretty cool -- I'm very impressed with the organization. They see about 40 to 60 youth a day, 7 days a week. I think they said that somewhere around 40% of their youth identify as homeless or in transition. This is a huge at risk population -- suicide is the number 3 cause of death of youth aged 15 to 24 overall.  It's the number one cause for GLBTQ youth.  It's estimated that GLBTQ youth are 2 to 6 times more likely to commit suicide than their peers, and they may account for up to 30 percent of completed suicides in this age group.  Service providers also estimate that gay, lesbian and bisexual youth make up 20-40% of homeless youth in urban areas. One of the cool things about Lambert House is that the youth can do chores to earn chits that can be spent on clothes, showers, haircuts, etc. Lambert House provides a safe and much needed supportive environment to kids who really need and deserve the help. (If you didn't follow the link above to the PFLAG safe schools page, it's really worth the read.)

Anyway, there were 15 of us and we spent the day taking just about everything from a huge basement out into the parking lot, cleaning out the attic and the basement, building shelves, and then organizing and moving the stuff to the attic, basement, thrift store and dump. Oh and reorganizing the library, and doing laundry (loads of towels that had been donated), and I'm sure some other things that I didn't see. Stuff that the regular volunteers never have time to do, 'cause they're working with the youth who come to the house. I was proud of us, and I think we made a real difference. Multiply that by, wow, I don't know how many teams from Microsoft and it's pretty impressive. You know, I'm not one of those people who think that everything good that Microsoft does is amazing -- much of it is enlightened self-interest. But this goes beyond that, I think. It really is a gift to the community.