Reaching Our Outdoor Friends (ROOF) is committed to providing for the safety, support, and overall well-being of homeless youths and youths-at-risk, age 12-25, in the Waterloo Region.

In accomplishing our objective of maintaining the health and safety of these individuals we provide resources and services that will enable them to make positive choices to end the cycle of homelessness.

The ROOF program has four fundamentals: Outreach, Drop-in, Essential Services, and Shelter.

Our outreach workers are on the streets daily meeting with homeless youths, building a rapport, providing for their basic needs, and offering resources that will help them to make positive decisions and guide them towards ending their homelessness. 

Drop-In includes: 1 on 1 counselling, anger management, hot meals, access to laundry and showers, therapeutic craft/art sessions, life skills training, basic personal support, recreation and special events, substance abuse and prevention programming, and referral support.

Essential services provide food hampers and youths with their basic hygiene requirements such as Toothbrush/Toothpaste, Tampons, Shampoo, and Birth Control. They have access to laundry and showers, medical treatment, life skills, foot specialist, psychiatric outreach, lockers for storage and to a distribution of clothing.

PAR (Providing a Roof) is a 10-bed emergency co-ed shelter for youths aged 16-25 years.  Beds are assigned on a first-come, first-serve basis as available.  Youth are required to complete various intake forms for informational and statistical purposes.  All youth residing at PAR set short/long term goals.  The youth may remain at PAR as long as their individual circumstance dictates. 

For more information about programming, please contact our Program/Volunteer Manager at 519-742-2788 extension 203