Building Community

Street Level:

Instead of ‘levels’ or ‘social status’ (us/them mentality) in our outreach and services, we try to ‘level the playing field’. This influences our vocabularly: instead of ‘the homeless’ we work with ‘people who are experiencing homelessness.’ Never have I been labeled as ‘housed’. In the same manner, we do not have ‘clients’ but rather ‘street friends’, that is, friends who happen to be street oriented.

If you come to our drop in or day programs, you will likely not be able to tell which servers are volunteers, work skills participants or street friends who are helping for the day. We don’t have prospective police academy students bouncing guys out of the drop in into the streets. We don’t have plexi-glass serving as a barrier between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

We like it this way.

All of us together, no one greater or lesser than the other – just people from different backgrounds doing our part and belonging to the same community.

Volunteers:

Similarly our volunteers enjoy working alongside each other: shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand with each other, and with our guests. We are all part of a community, we are in it together, we all have our own challenges and weaknesses – and this helps to keep us on track, with ourselves and each other.

Come visit us and see. Talk to our volunteers and find out just how much they have received and been blessed by interacting on a regular basis with the folks from downtown.

Or you could talk to some of our friends. You will be amazed at what you might gain from such encounters. Listen to their stories, hear their hearts, learn from their wisdom.

Who knows? It just might change your life.