About Teen Feed

Our Mission:

Teen Feed works with the community to offer support to meet basic needs, build strong relationships, and ally with homeless youth as they meet their future off the streets. With the tremendous support of the community, Teen Feed responds to the most basic needs of houseless and at-risk youth in the following focus areas: healthy meals and lives, youth support coordination, street outreach, healthcare access, and engaging the community through service.  Teen Feed responds to the most basic needs of homeless youth with three (3) integrated programs:  Teen Feed Meal Program, Street Talk Outreach Program (STOP), and Service Links for Youth (SLY). Healthcare support is an integrated component of all existing programs.

Our Core Values:

1. All people are entitled to the basic human rights of health, safety, and self determination.
2. We work to foster a sense of mutual respect with our clients. We recognize the autonomy of the youth we serve and respect their values and judgments.
3. The young people we serve have the right to meaningful voice and feedback about Teen Feed services and permission of the community.
4. We build and nurture relationships through consistency, trust, and mutual accountability, and the expression of radical compassion. We address undoing institutional racism through practice considering gender, racial and social inequities.
5. Homelessness is not a reflection of the merits of one’s character. We are all people of equal value; any of us could be in the same situation as the people we serve.

Our History:

In 1987, nurses from the University of Washington Medical Center noticed street youth in the University District area were severely malnourished. Together with community and faith groups, Teen Feed began to “meet youth where they are” by serving warm meals to youth in local donated meal sites. Today, Teen Feed provides warm meals, basic needs items, and supportive connections to youth in need. Teen Feed is the only consistent meal and crisis-specific program designed to meet the needs of houseless youth in King County 365 days a year. Teen Feed also provides the only consistent street outreach program in Seattle’s University District, a magnate area for houseless youth.

At a Glance:

Thanks to your partnership in 2023 Teen Feed will:

• Open its doors and feed 50+ youth each night, every night of the year
• Offer over 20,000+ nutritious volunteer-lead meals to hungry youth
• Connect with over 400+ individual youth in need
• Work with over 700 volunteers from various community, corporate, civic and faith groups resulting in significant labor cost reduction from our yearly budget.
• Leverage over $850,000 in donated food, basic needs items and related in-kind contributions
• Provide positive outreach connection, meeting hunger and basic needs for 7,500 youth, a mailing address or state identification, employment, healthcare enrollment, housing support, and more