Our Mission
Share your wisdom. Change a life.
16 Years. Hundreds of Mondays. One Extraordinary Classroom.
Mondays at the Mission was founded in 2010 with a simple idea: bring the world to young people who might otherwise never have access to it.
For more than 16 years, the program has held classes every Monday, except national holidays, inside Union Rescue Mission in Downtown Los Angeles.
Union Rescue Mission, founded in 1891, is one of the largest rescue missions in the United States and serves people experiencing homelessness in the heart of Skid Row. The Mission graciously opened its doors to Mondays at the Mission, giving us the opportunity to build a consistent classroom and serve the young people living there.
An Extraordinary Classroom
Over the years, the classroom has welcomed an extraordinary range of people from around the world: astronauts, Olympians, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, lawyers, doctors, athletes, educators, filmmakers, musicians, and innovators.
Among our guest speakers have been Buzz Aldrin, the first crew to walk on the Moon; Diana Nyad, the first person to swim from Cuba to Florida without a shark cage; Elon Musk, entrepreneur and technology pioneer; and Adrian Grenier, actor, filmmaker, and environmental advocate, along with hundreds of other accomplished professionals and visionaries.
These aren't simply guest lectures. They are opportunities for young people to sit across the table from someone who has accomplished something extraordinary, ask questions, hear the story behind the achievement, and begin to imagine themselves doing something extraordinary too.
Showing Up Every Monday
The power of Mondays at the Mission is also found in its consistency.
Every Monday, students know that someone will be there. A new speaker may walk through the door, a new subject may spark their curiosity, or a conversation may introduce them to a career they never knew existed. Over time, those individual experiences accumulate into something larger: confidence, curiosity, relationships, skills, and a broader vision for the future.
Since its founding, the program has helped more than 1,000 students stay in school, find employment, and attend college.
A Partnership Built on Trust
Mondays at the Mission exists because Union Rescue Mission made room for it. URM has spent more than 130 years serving people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles. Today, its Downtown Ministry provides shelter, meals, medical and dental care, mental-health and legal services, recovery programs, education, and other resources designed to help people move toward long-term stability.
Within that larger mission, Mondays at the Mission creates a dedicated space for young people to learn, explore, and encounter possibilities beyond the circumstances surrounding them.
The Bigger Vision - Every Child Holds the Key
A child should not have to be born into privilege to meet an astronaut. They should not have to live in a particular neighborhood to meet an entrepreneur, scientist, artist, doctor, lawyer, athlete, or inventor. And their circumstances today should not determine the size of the future they are allowed to imagine.
Mondays at the Mission brings possibility into the classroom, one Monday at a time.
The reality of Skid Row.
Skid Row is a roughly 50-block neighborhood in Downtown Los Angeles with one of the largest concentrations of people experiencing homelessness in the United States. Thousands of people live on its streets, in tents, shelters, single-room occupancy hotels, and supportive housing. In 2024, approximately 3,800 people were experiencing homelessness in Skid Row, with about 70% living unsheltered. Los Angeles County identifies Skid Row as having the highest concentration of homelessness in the county, as well as the highest rates of substance use and mental health crises and the highest number and rate of overdose deaths.
The conditions on the streets can be severe. Addiction and drug use are highly visible, including the effects of fentanyl and other substances. A substantial portion of the unhoused population has a serious mental illness or substance use disorder. County data has previously found that approximately 38% of unhoused residents in Skid Row reported a serious mental illness and 35% reported a history of substance abuse.
The physical environment reflects the intensity of the crisis. Public-health inspections have documented overflowing dumpsters, trash scattered through streets and alleys, illegal dumping, and rodent burrows. The City of Los Angeles deploys specialized sanitation teams to Skid Row to remove accumulated trash, litter and debris, sanitize sidewalks, and address environmental health and safety hazards.
For someone who has never been there, it can be difficult to understand the scale of what this means. Skid Row is not simply a neighborhood with a few homeless encampments. It is an environment where extreme poverty, homelessness, addiction, untreated or undertreated mental illness, overdose, violence and crime, human waste, garbage, pests and constant instability exist in unusually close proximity. It is a place where some of the most vulnerable people in Los Angeles are living alongside conditions that can be dangerous, unsanitary and profoundly difficult to escape.
The Union Rescue Mission
For 135 years, Union Rescue Mission has stood in the heart of Skid Row, serving people who have nowhere else to turn. Today, URM provides far more than a bed and a meal. Its Downtown Ministry provides emergency shelter, food, showers, laundry, medical and dental care, mental health services, legal assistance, education, recovery programs, job training, and case management.
Through Hope Gardens in Sylmar and Angeles House in South Los Angeles, URM also provides safe, supportive housing and long-term programs for women, children, and families working to rebuild their lives. Its recovery programs help people confront addiction and trauma, while its Learning Centers provide literacy, GED preparation, computer education, tutoring, vocational training, and employment support.
In 2024–2025 alone, URM served 685,215 meals, helped 400 families move into permanent housing, and served 1,893 children. The mission's purpose is not simply to get people off the streets for a night, but to help them heal, regain stability, reconnect with their families, develop skills, overcome addiction and trauma, find employment and housing, and ultimately build lives of independence and purpose.
