Soft Opening

Lost-n-Found Youth, Inc. announces soft opening of Lost-n-Found Youth Thrift & Consignment on November 14 ATLANTA, GA – Lost-n-Found Youth, Inc. (LnF), Atlanta’s only LGBT homeless youth housing program, is pleased to announce the soft opening of the Lost-n-Found Youth Thrift & Consignment store on Thursday, November 14, 2013. The store will be open from noon to 6:00 p.m., Thursday through Sunday. Located at 2585 Chantilly Drive in Atlanta, Georgia, the store offers savvy shoppers great bargains on gently used clothes, shoes, jewelry, furniture, electronics, housewares, and more. The store will add consignment sales after the first of the year. Thrift store profits will be used to fund existing and future programs and services for the homeless LGBT clients of LnF. “The LGBT community thrift store model has been very successful at fundraising for agencies in other states, such as California, and we strongly believe it will do well here,” explains LnF Treasurer and thrift store CFO, Paul Swicord. “This has been a community effort, from the people who donated items, to the hundreds of hours of hard work by our volunteers, to help from our city officials.” One such official, Councilmember Alex Wan, was particularly helpful in with the complicated municipal requirements necessary to open a retail business. "I extend my congratulations to Lost-n-Found Youth for reaching this milestone and, more importantly, my appreciation for the critical work that the group does for our community,” said Wan. “Helping to navigate the sometimes tricky waters of city permitting process was the least I could do for this very worthy cause, and I look forward to working closely with them going forward." In addition to shopping, customers may also drop off charitable donations during store hours. All donations to LnF and its new thrift store are tax deductible to the extent permitted by law. Donation pickup is not available at this time, but may be in the future. “The thrift store is working triple-duty to make the most out of the space the community has enabled us to have,” notes LnF Executive Director, Rick Westbrook. “It is an opportunity to grow Lost-n-Found Youth, Inc. by reaching our community in a whole new way. We will have a youth center open at this facility before the end of the year, and we hope to offer job skills training through the store to some of our clients who need work experience.” More information about the thrift store will be available at the LnF website, www.lost-n-found.org, soon. In the meantime, anyone interested in donating or volunteering at the store can contact store@lost-n-found.org. # # # About Lost-n-Found Youth, Inc. Founded in November 2011, Lost-n-Found Youth, Inc. is Atlanta's only nonprofit agency working to take homeless LGBT youth off the street. Lost-n-Found provides temporary housing, job search assistance and counseling, and many other services for LGBT youths aged 18-25 who are homeless or facing imminent homelessness, as well as street outreach and support of homeless young adults through age 25. www.lost-n-found.org