Stories · Families
What families actually say.
Four families on the things that made them stay: the van, the phone call, the free cut, and the first time a kid asked to leave the house early.
“I did not believe it was free.”
Denise O. has two kids, one in Crafts and one in Technology. She found STENCH through a flyer at the laundromat and assumed there was a catch.
“I asked three times. I asked the front desk, I asked a teacher, and I asked a board member at the open house. Every time they said, no, it is free, and nobody acted like I was being weird. My son is in Technology and he fixed our computer. Our computer. I have been paying $60 a month for a rental laptop and now I do not have to. That is not a small thing.”
Her son, she says, has become “insufferable about screws.”
“The van is the whole reason.”
Luis M. works until 5:30 in Beaverton. His daughter goes to the Lents site and takes the van from school. Before STENCH, she was home alone for two hours.
“I looked at four programs. Three of them ended at 4:30 and cost $300 a month. One was free but it was at the school and she would have had to wait until 6 in the office. STENCH picks her up and she is doing something until 6. I do not have a better sentence for what that is worth.”
“They called me before I knew something was wrong.”
Ariana T.'s son had a hard fall term. He was quiet at home, then quiet at STENCH, then stopped wanting to go.
“The site coordinator called me on a Thursday. Not to complain. To ask if something had changed. She had noticed he was not eating snack, which he always does. We found out he was being bullied at school. STENCH did not fix it, but they saw him, and that call is the reason he is still going. He is in Engineering now and he is loud again.”
“I got a haircut for the first time in a year.”
Rosa V. came to the Haircut-a-Thon with her grandson and left with a cut of her own.
“I was going to wait in the line with him and then they said, sit down, we have a chair. A girl who was maybe twelve asked me what I wanted and I said, I do not know, shorter. She showed me with her fingers. She did exactly that. I have paid $45 for worse.”
What families ask us to fix
In the 2025 family survey, 91% of families said they would recommend STENCH to another family. The most common request was more seats, followed by later pickup, followed by a second site on the far east side. We are working on one of those three and it is the one that costs $400,000 a year.
I do not need you to be perfect. I need to know who is with my kid and how to reach them. That is the whole bar, and most places do not clear it.
Every one of these people started somewhere
Most of them walked in on a Tuesday, sat at a bench, and stayed for eleven weeks. You can do the same.