Community Connections
AHIP
AHIP believes that everyone should be safe at home. They work year-round to provide emergency repairs, home rehabs, and energy-efficiency upgrades to families in Charlottesville and Albemarle County. Their mission is to ensure safe, affordable homes for our neighbors in need.
To get the job done, they work with a spectrum of community partners, including local governments, peer housing organizations, social services agencies, regional funders, a wide variety of volunteer groups, and donors. Together, they improve homes, preserve families’ assets, revitalize neighborhoods, and protect our local affordable housing stock.
The Haven
The Haven endeavors to end homelessness in the greater Charlottesville community.
Motivated by radical hospitality, they strive to be the point of entry for people seeking stable housing. They open the doors wide for any and everyone, no matter their circumstances.
Every day, their trained staff and dedicated community volunteers come together, working side by side to make homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring for our neighbors.
Blue Ridge Area Food Bank
At the Blue Ridge Area Food Bank, they are driven by the core beliefs that hunger is unacceptable; that everyone deserves access to enough food; that food sustains life and nourishes health; and that we are called to serve neighbors in need without judgment.
They were founded in 1981 in Staunton, VA by a 5-member board, including the man who would become the first Executive Director, Phil Grasty. By the end of the first year, the Food Bank distributed 233,000 pounds of food to the hungry through 202 member agencies in 18 counties along the spine of the Blue Ridge Mountains. At that point in time, the work was considered a “major experiment in food banking” because of the rural nature of the service area.
As the need for emergency food assistance grew in other areas of the Blue Ridge region, the Food Bank expanded and relocated to a new facility in Verona, VA, now the headquarters of the organization. Three other branches were established in Charlottesville, Winchester and Lynchburg between 1982 and 1985.