URBAN ALCHEMY
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Mission Statement
Urban Alchemy hires individuals who were formerly incarcerated to help transform people and places through respect and compassion. We provide services and engagement that heal communities challenged by the intersection of extreme poverty, mental illness, addiction, and homelessness.
About This Cause
When individuals are suffering in our public spaces, Urban Alchemy offers solutions. When a neighborhood, street, or intersection earns a reputation as a place to avoid, we turn it around. Urban Alchemy staff, known as Practitioners, create a peaceful and supportive presence, helping rebuild traumatized communities one person at a time. Urban Alchemy is a nonprofit organization founded in 2018. We quickly grew from a small program in San Francisco to a thriving social enterprise with over 1,200 staff working in California and Texas. We currently offer six services designed to transform trauma into resilience: 1. Interim Housing: operating safe camping, safe parking, tiny homes, hotels-based shelter, congregate shelter, and other client-centered, low-barrier alternatives to sleeping in public spaces. 2. Community-based Public Safety: providing first-responders to non-emergency 911 calls related to homelessness, mental health, and addiction. 3. Outreach: working with people experiencing unsheltered homelessness, using a strengths-based approach to connect them with services, shelter, and permanent housing. 4. Community Engagement: calming public spaces by forming bonds with residents, promoting positive behavior, and connecting people to local resources. 5. Hygiene Services: providing safe, clean, and welcoming public bathrooms and mobile showers that offer dignity to those in need while improving public health. 6. Street Cleaning: removing garbage and debris from streets and other public spaces, restoring a sense of pride to neglected communities. While this work is critical to our mission, the real alchemy is in relationships our Practitioners build with those we serve. The brooms, toilets, and showers are used as props to facilitate the engagements that help heal people and places. We believe that the best individuals to facilitate this healing are those who understand what it means to harm a community. Most Urban Alchemy employees, including management, experienced long-term incarceration. When fully embraced, this life experience, and the difficult inner work it requires, holds the possibility of producing people with extraordinary emotional intelligence, exceptional social skills, and unique leadership qualities. Practitioners receive extensive training and ongoing support to help ensure their success. The culture at Urban Alchemy is just as important as our training. Over 92% of Practitioners are Black people or people of color and 96% have been incarcerated and/or experienced homelessness. These shared experiences create a deep bond and a spirit of mutual support that leads to thriving employees who do impeccable work.