The Night Shelter: Getting ready
"Our challenge was to put together a night shelter venue in a month."
For over 10 years we've opened up our winter night shelter for men who become homeless at some point during the asylum process and have nowhere else to turn. This requires a huge commitment from the different venues, and the hundreds of volunteers, who've given their time and energy so faithfully over the years.
Last winter we welcomed a brand new night shelter venue on board. Ahead of the new night shelter season, we asked the leader of St Peter's, Rev George Reeves, to share a little about their journey with us:
"Our St Peter's Levenshulme Night Shelter story begins with a prayer meeting with our friends at St Margaret's Burnage. The answer to our prayer about how we could work better together in mission was a phone call from Vron at the beginning of September 2018. Our challenge was to put together a night shelter venue in a month.
We prayed and started talking to our neighbours. Virtually every door we pushed opened, with partnerships formed with St Margaret's, the New Covenant Church, an inter-faith dialogue group, our immediate neighbours, a mosque and a local business. Over the season we had over 50 volunteers join in driving, setting up, catering, welcoming, sleeping, clearing up, cleaning and doing the laundry.
It has been a lot of hard work, but still a great experience for us to get on board with Boaz. Our volunteers have visibly grown in confidence, our church family has drawn closer together by serving together, it's been great to get to know our Christian neighbours, it has progressed further our inter-faith relations and all in all been a positive experience. Now looking forward to the new season!"
We're so grateful to George and the team, not just at St Peter's but across their whole local community.
In preparation for the new night shelter season, we have been visiting our host venues to provide training and support for our volunteers. Each of our venues and their fantastic volunteers offer amazing hospitality in their own unique way to our night shelter guests. We are so grateful to each and every volunteer who gives their time and energy to serve our clients in this way – we can’t thank them enough!
If you are interested in volunteering at one of our night shelter venues this winter, we still have some gaps in the evening reception team and on our overnight teams (men only please) and also. Please email Vron on [email protected] to find out more!
