Holiday gifts for teenagers welcomed by organization

Question: We donate to Toys for Tots every year for the little kids, and to Meals on Wheels and other things for senior citizens, but I kind of feel like teenagers get left out in the holiday drives. Do you know of a collection service or holiday drive for older kids? We would like to donate to them, too.

Answer: Youth Outreach!, which helps homeless and runaway teenagers, welcomes donations. The program’s wish list is poignant in its simplicity: Basics such as new underwear, socks, rubber slippers, tennis shoes, bath towels, washcloths, laundry detergent and toiletries top the list. Monetary donations also are appreciated, which YO! can apply to its most urgent needs.

The drop-in center, which is run jointly by the nonprofits Waikiki Health and Hale Kipa, offers “a safe, nonjudgmental homelike setting where they can receive a hot meal, clean clothes, a hot shower, medical services, pregnancy prevention, job training and peer mentoring,” said Mary Beth Lohman, chief marketing and development officer, who thanked you for your generous intent to help vulnerable teenagers and young adults.

She suggested that you call Waikiki Health’s development office at 791-9331 to arrange to drop off your in-kind donation at its clinic at 935 Makahiki Way. To protect the teens’ privacy, donations may not be dropped off directly at the YO! center.

If you intend to give money, checks can be mailed to the clinic (note that you are directing your donation toward YO!), or you may donate online, at waikikihc.org/how-to-help/donate.

Besides money and the items listed earlier, YO! also needs water bottles; packaged snacks such as granola bars, nuts, raisins and juice drinks; new and gently used clothes for young men and women; backpacks; purses; and sunglasses.

There are many other worthy charities as well. Several holiday drives, including the Good Neighbor Fund, in which the Honolulu Star-Advertiser participates, allow donors to review profiles of needy families and “adopt” specific ones; you could support a family with adolescent or teenage children. Likewise, giving trees prominent at local shopping malls allow donors to fulfill specific wishes, which list the age range of the recipients.

Q: The brief tsunami watch last week had me looking in the phone book to check the evacuation zones. I wondered what the advice is for high-rises when you can’t get to higher ground.

A: In small print at the bottom of the Oahu evacuation maps, Note 4 says, “Structural steel or reinforced concrete buildings of 10 or more stories provide increased protection on or above the fourth floor; if you are caught near the shoreline (during a tsunami warning) consider using vertical evacuation.”

Besides looking at the phone book, you can access searchable-by-address maps of Hawaii and Guam tsunami evacuation zones and download a disaster preparedness app at honolulu.gov/dem, homepage of the city’s Department of Emergency Management.

On the maps, red signifies the evacuation zone for any tsunami warning, yellow (and red) for an extreme tsunami warning, and green is considered the safe zone. The yellow zone, farther inland than the red coastal zone, was added after the devastating 2011 tsunami in Japan inspired experts to re-evaluate their worst-case scenarios.

Mahalo

Thank you to the thoughtful and kind gentleman who brought a wheelchair for my mother, age 92, to use. She was having difficulty walking while at Kaiser Clinic on Pensacola. — Grateful mother and daughter from Manoa

Write to Kokua Line at Honolulu Star-Advertiser, 7 Waterfront Plaza, Suite 210, 500 Ala Moana Blvd., Honolulu 96813; call 529-4773; fax 529-4750; or email kokualine@staradvertiser.com.