Avangrid’s work goes far beyond just one night, though. Avangrid volunteers worked with more than 54 nonprofits across the state for a total of over 10,000 hours in 2025, and recently spotlighted DESK as a valued community partner in a press release. Volunteers from Avangrid have served hundreds of New Haven residents experiencing homelessness and poverty at 266 State Street through volunteering and regular drives for our Thanksgiving for All program. We are proud to be a consistent, year-over-year partner.
DESK has a long-standing relationship with Avangrid, and last year, United Illuminating President Franklyn D. Reynolds came to see DESK’s newly renovated Drop-in and Resource Center. Avangrid supports DESK’s energy efficiency and modernization through the Neighborhood Assistance Act.
Tickets for Breaking Bread are running out – get yourshere to join in an evening of culinary masterpieces. Funds raised from the event allow us to serve thousands of guests each year. You can join in the work that Avangrid does volunteering, hosting drives, and donating – these are the kinds of partnerships that power DESK and our mission to serve our New Haven neighbors. To learn contact volunteer@deskct.org or call (475) 238-6170.
Choco has spent her life engaging with her community, and she continues to even inspire the next generation to serve. Her favorite DESK memory is bringing her nieces and nephews to serve dinner on Christmas Eve. She says that her nephew started out the night shy, but by the end of the night, “the best part was my nephew who was scared to talk to people was the one who was so engaged with the community that we had to wait for him to finish before we could leave.”
Beyond DESK, Choco continues to serve the New Haven community. She volunteers with other organizations that provide services to empower adults with disabilities.
Choco says, “once a community servant, always a community servant,” and that proves true in her life. Join Choco and meet even more of your New Haven neighbors by volunteering, donating, or hosting a drive to support DESK.
Why continue to volunteer at DESK for over ten years? For Marty, it’s all because of the great work that DESK does. He has watched DESK make an impact on guests’ lives. He says that “If you are looking for an organization that makes real changes in the lives of its clients, changes that you can witness first-hand, DESK is the place for you” – and he certainly knows that, having seen dozens of success stories in the time he’s volunteered.
Beyond volunteering every week, Marty hosts and attends DESK events, and every year he hosts a Facebook fundraiser for his birthday supporting DESK. Outside of DESK, Marty is a committed member of the Greater New Haven community! He serves as an Associate Fellow at Yale’s Trumbull College and co-leads weekly Torah study at Temple Beth David in Cheshire.
Marty is part of the fabric at DESK, and we couldn’t do transformative work without the commitment from volunteers like Marty. If Marty’s story inspires you, consider getting involved with DESK through volunteering, donating, or hosting a drive.
So, they decided to host a holiday party and invite their neighbors to donate to an organization that supported people experiencing homelessness. Once Roger, a longtime DESK supporter and community leader, heard about the party, he directed them to DESK.
The Griffins say that they hope that people all over the area will take the initiative to organize events with a purpose and that “in a world where you can choose to be anything, it’s more fun to choose to be kind.”
This party is a testament to the ripple effect of giving; DESK is proud of how our friends have stepped up amid a year of uncertainty over SNAP benefits, continued high food prices, and rising rates of homelessness.
We’re happy to welcome the Griffins to New Haven and grateful to our supporters who share our mission with their neighbors.
Let’s make the Griffins’ wish come true by responding with renewed passion and generosity to support our community.
Join the Griffins this season in helping fill in the gaps in our community by donating at deskct.org/stepup.
BSW interns at DESK join staff and our volunteer corps in the operations of the weekly Olive Street Pantry program, the Evening Meals program, and the 266 State Street Drop-in & Resource Center.
Interns undergo numerous iterative trainings, including: de-escalation and crisis management; harm reduction and naloxone administration; area resource and program referrals; child, elderly, and disability-based mandatory abuse reporting; CPR; Connecticut Foodshare civil rights training; as well as many others, depending upon availability and tasks completed. BSW Interns also use weekly supervision time to reflect upon client relations, ethical service provision, therapeutic engagement and intervention, relating theoretical frameworks to real-life situations, and other matters.
We have interns join us from many college programs in Greater New Haven including the Yale Divinity School, Yale School of Public Health, and Southern’s Social Work Program. Here at DESK, we are training the next generation of case managers, social workers, and nonprofit staff, by imparting DESK’s values of client-centered, trauma-informed approaches and a harm reduction philosophy. We hope to ensure that these best practices are instilled in homelessness services and food assistance for a generation to come.
Our interns are getting hands-on training on how to employ an empathetic approach with clients in a humanizing, dignifying and respectful manner. They are also getting concrete, task-oriented training in areas such as how to effectively work with a range of partnering agencies to work through a cumbersome network of social services and realize a higher success rate in client outcomes.
Shannon from the SCSU 2023 BSW program describes her experience: “From the minute I stepped into DESK, I knew that I found the right internship. I learned more than I could have ever hoped to learn and was left with the knowledge that many of the other students in my class didn’t get. I left knowing I had made an impact even in the smallest ways. DESK was and will always be an important part of my journey as a social worker, activist, and human rights advocate.”
Interns at DESK are more than students; they are literal lifesavers. As DESK’s Executive Director explained earlier this year, “back in early December, Shannon, and one of our Drop-in Center staff, Aisha, had just gotten off their shift and were heading toward the train station when they discovered a client of ours laid out on the sidewalk in the midst of an apparent opioid overdose. The two of them sprang into action. Just as they had been trained, they assessed the situation, called 911, and grabbed their Narcan kit. For those who don’t know, Narcan, or naloxone, is a powerful antidote that reverses an opioid overdose in process. So that night, long before emergency medical personnel arrived, Shannon administered Narcan in the form of a nasal spray and saved this individual’s life.” We could not be prouder of our interns and the skills they deploy in such emergency situations.
Interested in interning at DESK? Please have your student advisor contact us at (203) 624-6426 or email info@deskct.org, for more information.
As part of their Headway series, The New York Times recently posted an interactive page of interviews with thirty individuals from all over the U.S. who have experienced or are currently experiencing homelessness. It’s powerful, illuminating, and, most importantly, humanizing. You don’t need to read it all at once, and you can bounce around and read different responses to the questions. Take some time to open both your heart and mind up to their responses, their stories, and their lives. Read on here.
