History

We Are Family Senior Outreach Network was born in 2004 with $15,000 donated by the multi-platinum punk band Good Charlotte and its ally, Positive Force DC, to a small knot of senior leaders and their friends at St. Aloysius Catholic Church in the North Capitol/Shaw neighborhood of Washington, DC. Other critical early supporters included the “Faith In Action” program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and trailblazing African-American community pillar, the Northwest Settlement House. This unique intersection of young and old, urban and suburban, black, white and brown, faith-based and secular, came together to address a gap in senior services and a broader community crisis in the Sursum Corda area, a low-income community a few blocks north of the U.S. Capitol. We Are Family has since added the Columbia Heights, Petworth, and Adams Morgan neighborhoods to its service areas.