Urban Ministry Center Provides Volunteer Opportunities to Help Homeless in Charlotte.
By Marissa Neale, 1 March 2019, Charlotte, NC.
The Charlotte homeless shelter, Urban Ministry Center offers a number of volunteer opportunities to those who want to help homeless “neighbors” in Charlotte.
The organization Urban Ministry Center depends on volunteer work and community support to help feed and provide for homeless citizens which Urban Ministry Center calls neighbors.
Urban Ministry Center offers a large number of different volunteer opportunities. Christine DeLia is a volunteer services director at Urban Ministry Center who oversees approximately 150 individuals who regularly volunteer at the shelter.
“The commitment is unbelievable …” DeLia says. “I think after they start to volunteer they really see that we need them.”
Many of the volunteers come on weekly basis but some volunteer sporadically through the shelter’s group ministries. But despite this large number of volunteers, there are still areas where the shelter has volunteer openings.
DeLia says that the volunteers they need most at the moment are drink servers to help to distribute drinks during lunch on Monday mornings. DeLia explains that this group volunteer opportunity requires at least four to six volunteers to bring gallons of powdered drink mix, ice and cups to the center and then fix the drinks and serve them to the neighbors.
Volunteers for the drink groups must be middle school age or older and all middle schoolers must be accompanied by adults. This differs from the 18-year-old requirement for volunteering in basic services positions such as shower duty.
Drinks are especially necessary during the hot summer months.
“We’ll get donations of water and we can hand that out, but sometimes we just don’t have anything,” Delia says.
At different times of the year the shelter needs help with other types of volunteer work according to DeLia. For example, DeLia says that in August they often struggle to find groups to help with Operation Sandwich since schools and churches are on summer break. Operation Sandwich is a division of the ministry where outside groups make sandwiches and bring them to the center to be served as lunch.
DeLia explains that the shelter is open 365 days a year, even in adverse weather such as the hurricane threat last September. To get to the shelter and help the neighbors in storms, some of the staff walk to the shelter, some take the bus and some are given hotels nearby.
“We always will find a way to make sure that we can at least serve a lunch and that the men and women can come and stay inside,” DeLia says.
Other Opportunities
The volunteer page of the website says during weekdays individuals have the opportunity to help by being shower attendants, laundry attendants, counselors and van drivers among other positions.
The Urban Ministry Center soup kitchen serves lunches every day. The soup kitchen has a new set of volunteers each day with 300 people volunteering each month according to the Urban Ministry Center website.
The center also has staff members who go to the shelter more frequently and are paid. Staff member Rachel Busby has worked at Urban Ministry Center for two years. She started as a volunteer and eventually becoming a staff member.
Busby stresses that the main piece of advice she could give new volunteers is that “getting to know the neighbors is just as important as the service you’re doing.”
An example of this comes from Busby’s own experience when she worked as a shower volunteer. While she worked in showers, she got to know the neighbors by putting up riddles and sometimes giving out prizes. Busby says the neighbors started calling her “Riddle Lady.” She eventually left shower work to become a counselor and stopped putting out riddles, but the neighbors continued to ask her to bring back the riddles.
DeLia says the shelter can serve up to 400 neighbors per day. But not all of Urban Ministry Center’s volunteer opportunities are confined to the homeless shelter.
Room In the Inn
An extension of Urban Ministry Center is the ministry “Room In The Inn.” This ministry is designed to give the neighbors a chance to spend the night in a safe environment off campus at churches and congregations.
Amy Pate acts as a Room in the Inn liaison between her Sunday school class at First Baptist Church of Matthews and Room in the Inn. She has been volunteering with her husband for around ten years. On Monday the 25th, First Baptist Matthews had 10 men stay the night with two men from the church staying overnight with them. A different Sunday School class hosts Room in the Inn each week and Pate guesses the church has about 30 volunteers each night they host.
The website reports that women and people with children usually take priority in Room in the Inn spots, but this might be in part due to the complications of accepting multiple genders. Pate reports that First Baptist Matthews does not accept women because it would require setting up separate sleeping areas and getting female volunteers to sleep overnight.
Outside the Shelter
A Charlotte Observer article titled “ ‘Nobody Deserves to Live in a Tarp.’ Teams Count Charlotte Homeless in Freezing Cold” reports that not all homeless people are willing to come to shelters. Some claim the shelters are overcrowded and unsafe, while others are reluctant to come due to addictions.
To combat the resistance towards the shelter, Urban Ministry Center also has a Street Outreach segment of the ministry. The ministry sends volunteers and leaders out in the morning and evenings to go find homeless neighbors and see how they can help to assist their needs as they live on the streets.
“I’ve done it so I could experience it as a volunteer and it is really great… we’ve met a number of people doing that” DeLia explains.
When someone is begging on the street, DeLia recommends avoiding giving out money and instead suggests handing out food, gift cards or bottled water.
“Or you could let them know about Urban Ministry Center… that we’re open seven days a week and we serve lunch from 11:15 to 12:15,” DeLia suggests.
