Redmond Christmas trees bring teens hope, home

Beulah’s Place in Redmond serves as a refuge for homeless teens. The program provides teens with a home, food and safety. Each teen agrees to work, go to school and eventually graduate from their program as independent adults.

Teens take between three and nine months to graduate. The program is customized but all teens must sign a legally binding agreement if they receive lodging. They serve 18- to 22-year-olds. They are not licensed for minors at this time.

This holiday season, Candy Cane Christmas Tree Company is helping with a cash donation and a percentage of sales from the Walmart Christmas tree lot in Redmond. Walmart donated its rental fee to make it happen.

So far, Beulah’s Place founders Ed and Andi Buerger have graduated 13 teens, two of them moving onto college.

“We teach them how to graduate into independent living that they can sustain without having to go back to a system,” Andi said Sunday. “And if they need health care, food stamps or anything like that, we make sure they get enrolled right away. So they have everything possible to launch.”

Andi says these teens want to work hard, they want to go to school and contribute into the community.

“If you take abuse, and drugs, and alcoholism and all the things that affect families across America, not just here, these are the kids that have been thrown out or discarded or, ‘You’re old enough, figure it out,'” she said. “And just because you turn 17 or 18 does not mean you have it all together.”

Three other states are interested in bringing Beulah’s Place to teens in need: Mississippi, California and Georgia.

“You’re not just changing one heart or one life,” Buerger said. “You’re changing a generation for our community when we take one of these young adults off the streets.”

Next year, they are hoping to have either a facility or Phase 2 complex for when teens graduate but who still can’t afford the rising rents in Central Oregon.

Donations to the program go toward food, shelter, clothing, medical assistance, dental and vision assistance, driver’s license training and fees, educational costs, transportation, essential needs not covered by food stamps or other assistance, cell phones (“clean” phones so teens can’t be tracked by abusers or predators), legal assistance, and sometimes rental or utility assistance once they move out, to get them going.

To donate or for more information, visit http://www.beulahsplace.org/ .