Our Programs
Each program is designed to meet people where they are with respect, agency, and practical compassion. Explore how we bring our values to life.
Bits of Care Bits of Home Brave Notes Kintsugme Present Based Communication Every Decision Hurts Bits of Life
Bits of Care
Bits of Care is our direct support initiative for people experiencing hardship and homelessness. We provide tangible, practical items delivered with dignity — food, clothing, hygiene products, warmth, and more. Each kit is thoughtfully curated to address real, immediate needs.
What makes Bits of Care different: donors choose specific items for named recipients, and support is given without conditions or expectations. Help is provided as an act of care, not charity, and recipients maintain their dignity and autonomy.
How it works
Donors choose a type of kit to purchase or make a contribution toward kit costs. Give A Little Bit assembles the kits and directs them where they are most needed.
Distribution is handled with care and respect. Public stories or images are only shared when appropriate consent has been given; receiving support never requires participation in storytelling.
Featured Kits
Available and planned options include Hygiene, Warmth, Nutrition, Foot Care, Connection, and other kits assembled around practical needs.
The current focus is making it simple for supporters to purchase a complete kit or contribute toward kit supplies and distribution.
Program Status
Bits of Care is our direct support initiative for people experiencing hardship and homelessness. Donors can purchase or fund thoughtfully assembled kits containing practical items such as hygiene supplies, food, warmth, foot care, and connection essentials.
Kits are prepared and distributed through Give A Little Bit and community partners based on current needs. Support is offered without conditions or expectations, with dignity, choice, and practical care guiding every distribution.
Location: Connecticut
Bits of Home
Bits of Home helps individuals and families turn newly secured housing into a functional, comfortable place to live. Moving into an apartment is an important step, but many people arrive with few household essentials and limited resources to purchase everything they need at once.
We provide practical items for sleeping, cooking, bathing, cleaning, eating, and settling in. Each kit is thoughtfully assembled to help a new space become livable, welcoming, and personal.
What makes Bits of Home different: support is based on the needs and preferences of each household. Items may be provided as complete kits, selected individually, or combined with other resources. The goal is not simply to fill an apartment, but to help someone begin creating a home with dignity, choice, and autonomy.
How it works
Donors choose a type of kit to purchase or make a contribution toward household essentials. Give A Little Bit works with community partners to identify current needs, purchase and assemble items, and direct support to individuals and families moving into housing.
Kit contents may vary based on household size, existing belongings, apartment features, cultural preferences, and participant choice. Donations may be combined to provide complete kits, individual items, or flexible support for needs that cannot be anticipated in advance.
Distribution is handled through trusted community partners with care and respect. Receiving support never requires participation in photographs, interviews, or public storytelling.
Featured Kits
Available and planned options include First Night, Kitchen Start, Bathroom Basics, Cleaning Essentials, Welcome Pantry, Comfort, and other kits developed around practical move-in needs.
The current focus is making it simple for supporters to purchase a complete kit, contribute toward household essentials, or help furnish an entire home one small piece at a time.
Program Status
Bits of Home is a developing household-support initiative for individuals and families moving from homelessness, temporary housing, or hardship into a more stable home.
Donors will be able to purchase or help fund thoughtfully assembled kits containing practical items such as bedding, cookware, towels, cleaning supplies, pantry staples, and comfort items.
Kits and individual essentials will be prepared and distributed through Give A Little Bit and community partners according to current household needs. Support will be guided by dignity, participant choice, and the understanding that a home is built a little bit at a time.
Location: Connecticut
Brave Notes
Brave Notes is a trauma-informed songwriting program that creates space for participants to give voice to their experience through creative expression and music. The program honors courage, resilience, and the healing power of being heard.
Purpose
Many experiences are difficult to speak about directly. Songwriting offers an indirect path — a metaphor, a melody, a rhythm — that can help participants process emotion and connect with themselves and others.
Brave Notes is not about becoming a musician. It's about finding your voice.
Participation
Participants work with facilitators in individual or group settings. The process is trauma-informed, non-judgmental, and designed to honor each person's pace and boundaries.
No musical experience required. All you need is willingness to show up and be present.
Program Status
Stage: Curriculum review
Current needs: Technology partners and pilot program hosts
Location: Connecticut
Kintsugme
Kintsugme is the art of personal repair. Drawing inspiration from the Japanese art form of kintsugi — the practice of repairing broken pottery with gold — Kintsugme invites participants to explore healing and transformation through the creative act of breaking, repairing, and rebuilding.
The program is built on a simple but profound truth: what is broken is not worthless. What is broken can be rebuilt. And in the rebuilding, something beautiful can emerge.
The Process
Participants create a ceramic piece, intentionally break it, and then repair it using gold leaf and other materials. The metaphor is personal: breaking can represent loss, trauma, or rupture. The repair represents agency, resilience, and transformation.
Participants take their finished piece home as a tangible reminder of their own repair and the beauty that can emerge from brokenness.
Healing Through Making
Art-based healing honors what cannot be said in words. The creative process itself — the handling of materials, the focus required, the sense of agency in deciding how to rebuild — becomes part of the healing.
No artistic skill required. Kintsugme meets participants exactly where they are.
Program Status
Stage: Curriculum review
Current needs: Program partners and facilitators
Location: Connecticut
Present Based Communication
Present Based Communication is a practical communication framework designed to help people connect more authentically with themselves and one another.
The practice slows communication down enough to recognize what is happening in the present and create space for understanding, connection, and choice. Rather than reacting from assumptions, past experiences, or familiar patterns, participants learn to notice what is happening, become aware of their response, understand what matters beneath it, and choose how they want to move forward.
Present Based Communication is not about finding the perfect words, avoiding conflict, or fixing another person. It is about creating the conditions in which people can feel heard, recognize what is happening within themselves, and respond with greater clarity and intention.
Communication Happens in the Present
Most of us move through conversations carrying distractions, expectations, past experiences, and assumptions about what other people think, feel, or intend.
Our histories, fears, values, and unmet needs may all enter a conversation—but the conversation itself is happening now.
Present Based Communication invites people to pause and become more aware of that moment. By slowing the communication process down, we can begin to distinguish what is actually happening from the interpretations, predictions, and meanings we may place around it.
That recognition creates room for understanding and empathy. When we can separate what is happening from what we assume it means, we become more able to recognize both our own experience and the experience of the other person.
We may begin to see that a reaction is connected to fear, hurt, uncertainty, other unmet needs, past experiences, or something deeply valued. This does not require us to agree with another person's interpretation, excuse harmful behavior, or abandon our own boundaries. It simply allows more of the human experience within the conversation to become visible.
From that greater understanding, new possibilities can emerge. We may ask a different question, listen more carefully, express ourselves more clearly, establish a boundary, acknowledge harm, or choose a more intentional next step.
A Practice of Recognition and Choice
Present Based Communication does not require everyone in a conversation to begin from the same place or to be fully present.
Sometimes one person can create enough space to change the direction of an interaction. At other times, that presence may be supported by a friend, facilitator, mediator, pastor, educator, coach, or community leader.
The goal is not to control the conversation or determine its outcome. It is to make more of what is happening visible so that the people involved have a greater opportunity to recognize, understand, and choose what happens next.
Practical Applications
Present Based Communication can be used in:
- Individual reflection and personal growth
- Relationships and families
- Workshops and facilitated groups
- Coaching and mentoring
- Schools and youth programs
- Workplaces and team settings
- Community and faith-based organizations
- Conflict resolution and mediated conversations
- Reentry and transition programs
The tools are designed to be practical, adaptable, and usable in everyday communication—not only during formal workshops or moments of conflict.
Program Development
Present Based Communication is currently in development, with initial programming planned for Q1 2027 in Connecticut.
The program is being developed for individual, group, community, organizational, and mediated settings.
Help Bring This Work Into the Community
Support the development of Present Based Communication through a donation, community partnership, program collaboration, or future hosting opportunity.
Partner With Us
Explore opportunities to host, support, develop, or deliver Present Based Communication programs.
Partner With UsEvery Decision Hurts
Every Decision Hurts is an immersive simulation that deepens understanding of poverty and homelessness through direct, personal experience. Participants engage with a licensed poverty curriculum and custom homelessness simulation designed to challenge assumptions and build empathy.
The Experience
Participants spend several hours living through realistic scenarios designed to illustrate the cascading barriers that create and sustain poverty and homelessness — the loss of a job, no ID, no address, no bank account, no transportation.
The simulation uses crisis cards to introduce individualized challenges, so each participant's experience is unique and personal.
Participants must make interconnected decisions about housing, employment, food, healthcare, transportation, and family needs. Each choice carries consequences, showing how even small setbacks can cascade when time, money, and options are limited.
Learning Outcomes
Participants leave with a deeper understanding of how systemic barriers compound, how quickly circumstances can change, and what resilience actually looks like.
The simulation highlights the "working homeless" — people with jobs who still lack stable housing and the resources to escape poverty.
Who participates
Schools, nonprofits, corporate groups, faith communities, and individuals seeking a deeper understanding of homelessness and poverty. The program can be adapted for different age groups and settings.
Program Status
Stage: In development
Launch: Estimated Q2 2027
Location: Connecticut
Bits of Life
Bits of Life is a community mentorship program supporting young adults aging out of foster care. We recognize that while the state provides services, there is no substitute for a dependable adult — someone to call at 11 p.m., a place to land after a disruption, advice when things get hard, and connection when you feel alone.
The Gap
Much of what we call "basic life knowledge" is not basic at all.
People usually learn it gradually through family and community. They watch someone pay bills, prepare meals, speak with a landlord, schedule an appointment, handle a car problem, complete tax forms, or recover from a mistake. They ask questions as they arise and receive guidance from people who know them.
Young people growing up in foster care may not have had consistent access to those experiences.
Frequent moves, changing caregivers, group homes, institutional routines, disrupted schooling, trauma, and survival demands can interrupt the ordinary ways practical knowledge is passed from one generation to the next. Decisions may have been made for them, household responsibilities may have been handled by staff, and the adults around them may have changed before trust or continuity could develop.
This does not mean they lack ability, motivation, or intelligence. It means they may not have had the opportunity to observe, practice, and ask about parts of everyday life that others take for granted.
A young adult may know how to adapt quickly to a new placement, read changes in another person's mood, protect their belongings, navigate complex systems, or survive instability. Those are real skills. But those experiences may not teach them how to:
- understand a lease
- read a paycheck
- store and prepare food safely
- compare utility plans
- communicate with a supervisor
- make a medical appointment
- recognize a financial scam
- respond to an official letter
- maintain an apartment
- or know whom to call when something goes wrong.
These gaps can have consequences far beyond the original question.
A misunderstood lease can lead to fees, conflict, or housing loss. A missed form or deadline can interrupt benefits, school, or healthcare. A small car problem can become a lost job. Food may be wasted because someone is unsure whether it is safe or how to use it. An unfamiliar bill may go unpaid until it becomes a larger debt.
The practical problem is only one part of the impact.
Not knowing something that others assume everyone should know can create shame. A young person may avoid asking for help because they fear being judged, exposed, or treated as incapable. They may guess, delay, ignore the problem, or turn to someone who is willing to help but may not be safe or trustworthy.
Bits of Life creates a different experience.
Participants can ask ordinary questions without having to explain why they do not already know the answer. They receive practical guidance, context, options, and help taking the next step.
The purpose is not to teach young adults to do everything alone.
It is to give them access to the everyday knowledge and dependable relationships that make independence possible.
How it Works
Young adults connect with trained mentors and a community of support through a technology-enabled platform. They can ask questions about housing, work, school, money, healthcare, transportation, food, or anything else they're trying to figure out.
There's no judgment, no required attendance, no proof-of-progress. Help is offered without ownership. Advice is offered without control. Connection is available without pressure.
Mentorship Without Control
Mentors aren't case managers or therapists. They're people who know how to do specific things — read a lease, prepare for an interview, cook on a budget, understand a paycheck, fix something around the house, navigate a system.
A little knowledge, offered at the right moment, can make a meaningful difference.
Participation Options
Young adults: Ask everyday questions, connect with trusted people, and get help navigating next steps without judgment.
Mentors: Share what you know. You don't need to be an expert in everything.
Community partners: Help us connect young adults with specialized resources when a question requires more than community knowledge.
Program Status
Stage: Concept planning
Launch: Estimated Q4 2026
Location: Connecticut
