Our Saviour's Community Services

Our Saviour's Community Services, based in the Phillips neighborhood of South Minneapolis, supports adults in increasing their skills and improving their lives through access to emergency shelter, supportive housing, and free English classes.  

We provide these services to adults experiencing homeless and English language learners through our two programs – Our Saviour’s Housing and the English Learning Center.  

Your gift this Give to the Max Day season - at whatever level is meaningful for you - makes it possible for members of our community to safely access essential services of shelter, stable housing, and education. We invite you to learn more about our programs and our recent accomplishments below.  

At Our Saviour’s Housing, we take on homelessness through two different solutions: emergency shelter and permanent supportive housing.  

Our emergency shelter is open 24/7 with 21 beds available, including 10 beds reserved for medical respite. Every guest has their own room, enhancing privacy and a sense of belonging. Guests also receive case management support, three meals a day, access to our laundry facilities, and support from OSH staff members, volunteers, and partner organizations.    

Our permanent supportive housing program serves community members who have experienced long-term homelessness and who live with a mental, chemical, or physical health condition. For as long as needed, we support residents in affordable rental housing, on-site and scattered around Hennepin County.  About 100 community members participate in this program at any given time. 

In the past two years, Our Saviour’s Housing has:  

• Refined and extended our medical respite initiative at our Emergency Shelter in partnership with M Health Fairview, providing on-site medical care and care coordination for people experiencing homelessness who are recuperating after a hospital stay.
• Launched pilot mental health services onsite at our Emergency Shelter in partnership with People Incorporated, providing access to low-barrier mental health services for our guests.
• Started participating in a new program called Housing With Integrated Services, which expands referral streams for our permanent supportive housing program, empowering us to help more community members experiencing homelessness access housing.  

The English Learning Center (ELC) is a community of adult learners, advocates, staff, and volunteer teachers. We are dedicated to supporting adult learners seeking to increase their English literacy as they navigate life in the U.S. Students at the English Learning Center come to the U.S. as immigrants or refugees. In our latest fiscal year, 772 students represented 46 countries of origin, and spoke 33 first languages. 

The ELC provides seven levels of English classes for students twice a day, four days a week, both online and in-person. We operate without waiting lists, meaning that students can come in and register, test, and start classes immediately. Our students come from many educational backgrounds, and each student brings a unique set of experiences that adds to the diversity of our learning community. Everything we do is informed by their input, goals and needs.  

Our volunteers and staff also bring a variety of life experiences to our classes. Thanks to our team of volunteers, the ELC is able to offer smaller class sizes where students can receive individualized attention. Together, we listen to and learn from each other to cultivate an educational community that prioritizes our learners. 

In the past two years, the English Learning Center has:  

• Experienced exponential growth in student attendance and the number of students enrolled, which has doubled each year since 2021. 
• Expanded summer programming to include special classes and field trips that foster student belonging in the Twin Cities.
• Adapted our classes and registration process to better support students, including adding an additional class level to our curriculum and dedicating more time and resources to registering and testing students. 

As an organization, Our Saviour’s Community Services has grown and changed not only to meet current needs, but also looking towards the future. 

In the past two years, Our Saviour’s Community Services has:  

• Established our Participant Advisory Council, with participants from our programs meeting with organizational leaders quarterly to share their insights.
• Learned more about the threads connecting and underlying our programs through an organization-wide survey of all participants to determine the effectiveness of programs and find areas for improvement.
• Engaged participants across all of our programs to inform priorities for reimagining the campus we share with Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church. 

Thank you for standing with our students, guests, residents, and staff in this transformational work this Give to the Max Day season.