Give and Feel Better

I used to work in a homeless shelter for a short while. Was my first salaried job actually, and while the pay was horrible, I believe my work was important. Unfortunately there were many things I could not do because there is so much work to be done. My main job was to keep the housing establishment safe and help elderly people apply for Medicade and eventually move into assisted living homes, while helping others search for jobs. But much more needs to be done in a shelter.

Feeding our guests was usually the job of church volunteers who would have their congregations donate money for one night of the week and have a few actually appear to serve food, but many nights the shelter could not provide dinner. This is actually an easily avoidable tragedy. If any of you work for a grocery store of fast food restaurant you have unused food at the end of the night that will spoil and is usually thrown away. Do not throw this food away. Baked goods from grocery stores are especially easy to give away, and every shelter will accept them unless they are an unusually successful shelter. Ask your local baker or grocery store managers what they do with extraneous food. Ask them if they would be willing to donate that food to a homeless shelter. You'd be doing your community a great service.

Another way to help is to volunteer time helping kids stuck in shelters with their homework. These kids are usually starved for attention and need some kind of direction. Their parents want to help them but are usually stuck trying to find affordable housing, jobs, or going to school. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.

I only bring this up now because I remember summer was a horrible time for shelters. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Easter are generally holidays that shelters rely upon, but summer months are hard for these places. There are no college kids or high school kids who need to earn community service hours for school, no presents or donations from large corporations, and even less church volunteers because of the vacation season.

So help out now while it is most in need. Give your time, food, other items many people never think about like blankets, old linen, clothes, toilet paper (lord how homeless shelters need toilet paper), cleaning supplies like bleach, sponges, mops, brooms and pine sol. Give what you can, because these institutions are worthwhile enterprises. It has been almost four years since I worked in a shelter, and even then government grants were hard to come by. I'm sure with a conservative (no offense, its just their policy to have churches help more than the government, and there are not enough churches to really donate what is needed) government in office funds are even harder to come by.

Give what you can, and feel better.

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