Want to help those in need this holiday season? Here are 24 worthy charities‚ all recommended by the Catalogue for Philanthropy Greater Washington.
If You Want to Help Veterans and Military Families
This nonprofit encourages veterans at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center to help process their experiences by painting, acting, and taking part in other arts.
This organization, which arranges housing for the homeless, has a special program for vets. A North-west DC welcome center also offers food, internet, and job placement plus access to medical services for those without insurance.
Operation Renewed Hope Foundation
A five-year-old charity that has helped hundreds of homeless vets find permanent homes while also offering access to health care, counseling for PTSD, and job training.
When vets living in the District have their benefit claims denied, these volunteer attorneys provide free legal services.
Supports wounded veterans and their family caregivers in Bethesda by providing housing, cab rides, massages, and social events such as barbecues and movie nights.
If You Want to Help Kids and Families
Through afterschool pro-grams and an intensive sum-mer camp, Aspire seeks to improve language and literacy skills of more than 1,000 struggling Arlington students.
This group-housing program in Northern Virginia gives homeless teen parents a place to live while they at-tend school or work. It also offers classes on sex education, money management, and child development.
These afterschool and summer programs teach teens not only how to garden and cook but also about leadership and giving back: The meals they make are donated to community organizations.
Foster kids and those in the District’s child-welfare system often lack a stable presence in their lives. This charity matches young people in need with trained volunteers who attend court hearings and offer other support.
This bilingual, 18-month program provides a place to live, plus parenting classes and job training, for homeless women and children—85 percent of whom are Latino—as they transition to permanent housing.
A program offering discounted music education to more than 600 children, pre-kindergarten through 12th grade, who might not otherwise learn to play an instrument.
This community center in DC’s Wellington Park dishes out healthy meals, homework help, and mentoring for 500 children.
Bethesda’s KID—which stands for Kid International Discovery—has 3-D printers, woodworking, and an electronics lab, all to promote creativity and STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) learning for ages 6 to 14.
Main Street Child Development Center
Provides preschool education for low-income families in Fairfax—including, where needed, special education.
This public charter boarding school in DC offers small classes and emotional support for children who have special needs or have experienced significant trauma.
To assist schools that don’t have enough books on their shelves, Open Book brings in authors and illustrators for writing and reading workshops and presentations—with each child taking home a signed book.
If You Want to Help the Hungry and Homeless
Britepaths clients are mainly single parents juggling several jobs and earning $22,000 or less a year in Fairfax County. When they hit a rough patch, this charity steps in with short-term grocery assistance as well as budgeting classes and mentoring.
Of the District’s 7,000 home-less, most are women. Calvary provides them with housing, healthy meals, education, and mental-health and addiction services.
Serves hot breakfast daily to homeless and low-income people in Adams Morgan and Dupont Circle while offering access to bilingual health care, legal support, housing, haircuts, and job referrals.
Thanks to vouchers for farmers markets, this program enables low-income families in the District to buy more local, healthy foods.
This nonprofit not only provides housing for low-income Alexandria families but also offers afterschool and summer programs, translation assistance, and English classes.
Works to rapidly rehouse struggling families who have lost their homes to eviction or foreclosure in Fairfax County.
Provides showers, laundry facilities, computer access, and more for homeless men, as well as a food pantry serving 200-plus families in DC’s Ward 6.
Offers homeless people in Montgomery County not just nutritious meals but also clothing and blankets, toiletries, haircuts, bus tokens, eyeglasses, and more.
For more information on these and other charities—and to donate or volunteer—visit the Catalogue for Philanthropy Greater Washington at cfp-dc.org/doinggood.
Rosa joined Washingtonian in 2016 after graduating from Mount Holyoke College. She covers arts and culture for the magazine. She’s written about anti-racism efforts at Woolly Mammoth Theatre, dinosaurs in the revamped fossil hall at the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum, and the horrors of taking a digital detox. When she can, she performs with her family’s Puerto Rican folkloric music ensemble based in Jersey City. She lives in Adams Morgan.
