There was a major five-alarm fire at the Windsor apartment building in the Mt. Pleasant neighborhood this week that has left hundreds of people homeless, many of them low-income Salvadoran immigrants.

Loaves and Fishes is located a couple blocks away from where the fire occurred and has been serving individuals in the Mt. Pleasant community for over 30 years and we are currently discussing ways in which we can help the families affected by this tragedy. Fortunately, there has been a significant response from the greater Washington D.C. community and the D.C. government and there are several sites setup where displaced individuals can go for help and volunteers can go to donate their time or clothes and food. For more information, we recommend visiting the local community group Hear Mount Pleasant which has the following advice for volunteers:

"We are currently working on determining ways that Hear Mount Pleasant can best help the residents of the Mount Pleasant Fire. We will try to keep this page updated with latest news and information. You can also signup for email updates that we will send out periodically.

• Baby Shower for a Tenant
• Local Businesses helping Victims (Includes information on Don Jaime's Breakfast benefit and Tuesday's Wine Tasting at Marx Cafe)
• Volunteer Time, Accomodations, and Translation Services
• DC General Donation Point - Volunteers Needed
• Neighbors Consejo Donations and Events
• including Online Donations, and needed items. Please click the link to see what donations they are still accepting at this time. They are also in need of volunteers to help sort the donations."

For the time being, we recommend that volunteers who wish to donate supplies or clothes consult with one of the above listed organizations as Loaves and Fishes has limited capacity to store and distribute these goods. We will update this post with more information as we get it.

Thank you to all those who supported Loaves and Fishes in the Help the Homeless walkathon, sponsored by Fannie Mae. With your help, we raised $9,095 this year—the best we’ve done in several years!

These funds will help us continue to serve over 500 meals each weekend. We especially want to thank our partners, Lightstreams Glass Tile, and everyone who walked for Loaves and Fishes, sponsored other walkers or helped organize the event.

About the Walkathon The Fannie Mae Foundation Help the Homeless Program raises awareness of and funds for Washington metropolitan area organizations that are working to prevent and end homelessness, with an emphasis on programs that help homeless people return to independent living. The Help the Homeless Program also fosters volunteerism in service to the homeless and those at risk of becoming homeless.

You can help the Loaves and Fishes program by donating supplies to help keep our costs down. The following is a list of supplies we need every weekend (we serve around 200 plates on Saturdays and 300 on Sundays on average). Most of these supplies cost around $10-15 for 500 servings, especially when you buy in bulk at places like Costco:

• Forks (we rarely use spoons or knives).
• Plates (make sure they are extra sturdy to hold our servings).
• Plastic bags (any extra grocery bags you have lying around -- our clientele like to use these to carry their seconds home).
• Cups: we use 12oz styrofoam cups.
• Napkins or paper towels.
• Dish and/or hand soap (any size).
• Any kind of drink mixes: Iced tea, lemonade, coffee. We haven't been able to provide these due to budgetary constraints but they are much appreciated.