UMC Blog

Another entry in celebration of our great VISTA's, during AmeriCorps Week.

Last summer I got a ‘cold call’ from a donor wanting to help the homeless; little did I know the impact Calita Taylor would eventually make on the Urban Ministry Center. The traits she brought to that first visit, enthusiasm paired with a practical and positive approach to solving problems, have helped her (and us) greatly in her current placement as Basic Services Coordinator, through the AmeriCorps VISTA program.

Calita’s first challenge: the mail. Over 1,000 people receive mail and packages at UMC and the sheer volume creates a complexity you would never imagine. And for many neighbors, the mail is their only connection to the outside world, to services and assistance, or their next step out of homelessness. Imagine waiting on that ID you need so badly—the mail becomes the most important service we offer you at that moment. Calita takes that personally, respecting the personal business and connections that are so important to some of Charlotte’s most vulnerable neighbors.

Until now, volunteers sorted mail anywhere they could find space, including the floor. You had to separate, stamp, check against 2-3 different lists, then alphabetize, and finally place it in the box. . .very time consuming. Calita has introduced sorting bins with alpha-specific lists and place cards to eliminate much of those time vacuums. And it’s working famously! Volunteers who have been here for years are loving the system and have told me how efficient it is.

You might be able to help Calita with her next task: recruiting regular volunteers to help sort and distribute mail. These are short positions, 10am-12pm for sorting, 11:30-12:30 for distributing mail to neighbors. Calita is anticipating more volume during the early week days once the USPS terminates Saturday delivery in August. So, these volunteers will be more important than ever to get the mail put up on time. To volunteer, fill out the individual form found on our Volunteer webpage and indicate mail as an area you’d like to help with.

After that, Calita will be on to Showers and Laundry. Recruiting and improving. It’s what she does!

“Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”

Those were the words, from Psalm 119:105, that resident Solomon Agunbiade shared with the group after they walked the canvas labyrinth inside Moore Place. Solomon recalls that as his favorite walk, because the lights were off and the path was lit with candles. He was instantly reminded of the twists and turns on the path of life and the light that guides him through. The labyrinth walks offer Solomon a time to focus on his own prayer and meditation, and he seems grateful for the community he feels in that moment.

There is a dedicated group of 10-15 walkers at Moore Place, getting together every Monday to venture to a new park or place around Charlotte. On the fourth Monday, they are joined by volunteer Kathy Mansfield who facilitates a walk at a local labyrinth. The group has walked the labyrinths at Avondale Presbyterian Church (3 times, and a favorite!), Myers Park Baptist Church, Sardis Baptist, Wedgewood Baptist, and a canvas version laid out at both Myers Park United Methodist and Moore Place. Kathy’s website, http://www.charlottelabyrinthgroup.com/, offers extensive information about labyrinths, their history, and benefits. My favorite insight:

“Unlike a maze – there are no dead ends, only a clearly defined path. The labyrinth journey quiets the mind as it removes us from the distractions of daily life. In so doing it allows us to reflect – receive – and to be renewed. The inward and outward turns, symbolize our path through life and our spiritual journey. We appear to reach our destination, only to find that we still have a long way to go.”

Kathy became interested in labyrinths on a trip to France with her son in 2000, when they discovered the labyrinth inside the Chartres Cathedral. Since that time Kathy has been drawn to labyrinths (especially that particular pattern) and knows walking the labyrinth is the way she best accesses “the sacred within [her]self and to connect with God.” She has undergone extensive training to become a Veriditas Advance Certified Facilitator to share the gift of the labyrinth with others.

And she’s been wildly successful at Moore Place in that endeavor. Tenant Services Coordinator Katie Church sites the Labyrinth Group as “an important source of fellowship and support among several of our tenants. From time to time, someone will lose their way or feel unsteady on their feet.  Inevitably, another member of the group will be found by their side, guiding the way.” A testament to their dedication and interest: a cool rainy day last September when Kathy and staff thought about canceling, but residents insisted on walking the labyrinth at Myers Park Baptist Church. They saw the rain as calming, soothing and cleansing—perfect for an introspective walk.

On February 1, 2013, Moore Place recognized its one year anniversary with an open house for the community. The group created a labyrinth on the front lawn, dedicating it as a celebration of housing and yet a reminder of the 2,567 people in Charlotte who are still living without the safety, warmth and stability of a home. Of the 140 guests, 35 participated, with Solomon and fellow tenant Justin Markel offering guidance, information and insight to those interested in walking the path. Justin told me how much he values the time with his fellow residents and how the walk, along with the burning of his written concerns helps him to release his own worries.

Kathy says, “I told the residents that they are no longer just labyrinth walkers, but labyrinth keepers (keepers of the wisdom) and labyrinth builders.  That brought smiles to all of their faces!” It’s such a gift to share your ‘wisdom,’ and insight with a larger community and I have been a happy recipient of the gifts from this group.

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Yesterday, Hunter treated some of our neighbors to McDonald’s for lunch. That may not sound like much (and technically, it’s against our rules), but it’s a great example of how people go above and beyond every day to help our clients. Hunter normally volunteers in the laundry, but with our Tuesday van driver out of the country, Hunter stepped up to fill the need. What he didn’t know was that after he drove 31 people to the DMV, DSS, CMC and other places reduced to acronyms, if he brought some of them back late for lunch, we would save a plate for them. Instead he took matters into his own hands and made sure they were fed before he brought them back to 945 N College St.

And Hunter is just one of the 39 volunteers on site yesterday to help provide basic services to our neighbors. Afternoon Desk Volunteers Betty, Linda & Sandra helped neighbors sign up for services. St. Andrew’s United Methodist was there to serve drinks during lunch and dozens of other volunteers and staff helped to make Tuesday, November 27^th a day of smooth sailing and service to others including the following:

· 4 Job/resume counseling

· 31 Van transportation

· 35 Loads of laundry

· 45 Computer lab

· 47 Counseling

· 47 Showers

· 53 Phone calls

· 294 Lunches served

Our staff and partners also helped neighbors address their medical, income and housing needs. Nurse Lorraine, from CW Williams, is on site every morning to provide care, helping 16 people on Tuesday. Grace, our SOAR Coordinator, interviewed 2 new potential clients yesterday. She’s already helped 27 to access their disability income this year and she has a 100% approval rate! Megan works for the county’s Homeless Services department, but her office is at UMC so she is readily accessible to her clients. On Tuesday, she continued to do what she does best, listening and helping people find housing opportunities in Charlotte.

Vonnie and Jeff are volunteer counselors every Tuesday afternoon. Vonnie mostly helped people with transportation to their new jobs yesterday! UMC will provide a 10-ride bus passes for new employment (verified by our counselors) until that first paycheck arrives. The week before she had more requests for assistance with ID. Jeff also helped with transportation and ID, but one neighbor really worried him—a man with physical and medical disabilities, unable to work, not yet receiving any disability assistance, and ineligible for shelter. Sleeping outside will likely exacerbate his conditions. Jeff helped him with referrals to a different shelter and has another hope for him: Room In The Inn.

Urban Ministry Center’s Room In The Inn program starts on Saturday, December 1^st. That’s what team member Paul was working on Tuesday. Specifically, he’s found another congregation to support the program and is in the process of matching them with a more seasoned church. For the first few weeks the lowest bed number is 98, while the highest is 190. . .that’s a lot of people off the streets when it’s in the 30’s, becoming extremely uncomfortable, if not unhealthy to sleep outside.

Our annual gate survey was held on an October Monday and showed over 500 people coming onto our site (23 for the first time that day). We thank the community—our volunteers and our donors especially—for partnering with our staff to make yesterday, and every day, an opportunity for service, a moment of change, and a time to love our neighbors.

The Maxwell House Drops of Good Renovation video for Urban Ministry Center has been posted!

Did you know that the Urban Ministry Center has 3 gardens in Charlotte? Each is a therapeutic garden, is a member of the Friendship Garden network, and each has had lots of excitement this year!

At 945 College Street, GardenWorks 945 grows organic produce for our neighbors, the Soup Kitchen, the Common Grounds Farm Stand, and for Friendship Gardens. Neighbors work in the garden, but this year the spotlight has been on the really wonderful improvements made possible by our community, including a grant and work group from Duke Energy to get the upper garden cleared, terraced and planted with 125 sweet potato plants! And of course, last month we were thrilled to welcome hundreds of volunteers onsite after UMC won the Maxwell House Drops of Good renovation facilitated by Rebuilding Together of the Carolinas. These improvements included new raised, table top beds for people in wheel chairs, a vertical garden for those who cannot bend over, a shaded area, coldframes, a new information sign, mulching, and more. The garden looks great and we have lots of volunteers to thank for that! Contact Trish Fries to get involved, or follow the UMCGarden on Facebook!

In April, Friendship Gardens organized an installation of 8 raised beds at Moore Place, our HousingWorks program located on Lucena Street, housing 85 previously homeless individuals where the average length of homelessness for tenants was 9 years.

This brand new garden also has a wonderful group of dedicated volunteers who come each Wednesday morning to work in the garden and engage with the tenants. According to Stephen McQueen, HousingWorks Assistant Director, “Our summer garden has produced delicious tomatoes, and bell pepper and squash.  And it is still producing okra.  Our tenants have enjoyed early picking a few green tomatoes to make…..you know what (fried green tomatoes).  We have some transitional items added to the garden such as basil and watermelon.  I often see some of the tenants watering garden in the early hours of the morning and some in the late afternoon—tending to the green.  This has been a wonderful addition to our grounds and has helped bring a little more ‘home’ into our tenants’ lives.” To volunteer on Wednesday’s, please contact Katie Church.

Last, and maybe most exciting right now, is the SABER garden. SABER is a substance abuse treatment program for homeless men. The garden is one of the activities in a very deliberate and intensive program with an outstanding success rate of 55% after 9 months as compared to the national average of 20%. Located on the property where the guys live, they tend the garden each week, and it has also seen some great community support from the Scouts this year.

Scoutreach is a division of Scouting that emphasizes leadership among urban youth. Troop 394 from the Johnston YMCA participated in a Scoutreach project led by QuaDoffious Sutton from Vance High School. The boys built fences and gates to delineate and protect the garden from nibbling friends.

SABER has also received a grant from Keep Mecklenburg Beautiful to install native plants in September. As a result, they have planned a community service day on September 22 to do yard work, clean up, and install plants, including those native to North Carolina and a few special items in memory of Kate Bland, a SABER therapist who passed away in August. If you’d like to help with this clean up/planting day, please contact Laura McCarthy.

We couldn’t have asked for a better team of people to make this project a success! There’s no way we can thank everyone (from the inkind sponsors, to the churches, to the parking assistance, to many others who quickly agreed to help out), but there are a few who need recognition. First up in our timeline of success: Rebuilding Together of the Carolinas Executive Director Amy Gough. Amy prepared the grant application for us and took many hours to understand our neighbors, our services, and our needs. Over the course of five months, Amy became our best advocate, always reminding others of the project purpose and impact of decisions on our neighbors.

Next and likely the very most crucial team: the Charlotte community and the dedicated ‘horde’ of people who voted for UMC in the Maxwell House Drops of Good Community Project contest. We are still hearing stories about people who voted for us – many asked not by us, but by other advocates for UMC and the homeless. We cannot thank YOU enough for making this happen! We had people vote while on vacation in Australia, from all over the U.S., and I’m sure we will continue to learn of those who played a part in a renovation that was very local, but may have happened because of a global effort. (thanks again!)

Our thanks also to the local Rebuilding Together of the Carolinas Board of Directors who embody the definition of a ‘working board.’ Their dedication, experience, time, and resources made the project go incredibly smoothly. One of their newest members, Robert Price, took the lead, and provided the confidence and leadership everyone needed to accomplish an extensive work scope.

The Rebuilding Together national staff provided wonderful support, gentle guidance and lots of experience with such a large, public project. We also have to thank Maxwell House for taking such interest and providing so much support to community centers across the U.S. Follow their Drops of Good Truck as it moves around the country delivering much needed financial support to centers providing opportunity and hope to a diverse population of children, American Indians, the elderly, and more.

And Trace Adkins volunteering at the Urb--how cool was that?!

Finally, our thanks to the volunteers who came and spent hours (and even days in many cases) in the hot sun helping us to improve our century old Depot building, community garden, and grounds. They did so with smiles on their faces and kindness in their hearts as they tore down, built up, hauled, dug, spread, hammered, and painted, painted, painted!

As a result of this renovation, the Depot is more energy efficient (six sets of doors replaced!) and has had a great interior facelift (paint, floors, bathroom upgrades). ArtWorks 945 has space that no longer looks like the old soup kitchen, but is fit for storing large canvases, precious works of art, and organized supplies. GardenWorks 945 has the opportunity to serve a larger population with table-high raised beds and a vertical garden, the opportunity to extend its growing season with new cold frames, a vehicle for education with a new garden sign, and an opportunity to contribute even more to the Common Grounds Farm Stand with the installation of 10 hydrangea bushes. Not to mention, how great it looks and how inviting the garden feels now! I could go on, there are benches, a new pergola, and more. . .but a picture's worth a thousand words: check out the pics on both the Urban Ministry Center, Charlotte and Rebuilding Together of the Carolinas Facebook pages.

Words of praise and nominations for imaginary awards are nice, but few volunteers are in it for the recognition. Instead they are rewarded with returned smiles, friends they never would have made before and the chance to join others on their journey through homelessness and hopefully stability.

Temporary volunteer coordinator Jana Harston wrote that note about volunteer Desk Minister Bailey Mundy after she observed him handling the front desk all by himself, fielding questions about lockers, mail and sharing details of the dental van. Jana said, “Nothing phased him; he was in command with a smile the entire time, maintaining a joyous demeanor among the most unpredictable circumstances.” Personally, Bailey feels blessed and enjoys returning blessings to others each week. A civil engineer who retired in 1995, Bailey has volunteered every Monday morning at the Urb for 12 years—except for routine ski trips in the winter. Those trips must do wonders for his attitude, as Dale Mullinnex describes him as a “Ray of sunshine all the time.”

Counselor Jamaal Gilcreast, on the other hand, has just begun his volunteer time at UMC, working Thursday mornings for the last six months. He says by the third week, he knew this was the place he would stay. Jamaal has a Bachelor of Social Work and his family had experienced homelessness in the past. He feels like he understands many of the challenges of the neighbors, and counseling seems a perfect fit for him as you can often find him here past his shift to help out. He stresses that volunteers should know that every effort and job counts at UMC and when asked what he likes best about UMC, he says it’s that we never turn anyone away.

In a sense, Volunteer Sue Coonen may be the ‘mother’ of all volunteers at Urban Ministry Center. Sue started the original Soup Kitchen at St. Peter’s Episcopal back in 1979. St. Peter’s Soup Kitchen was the foundation for the Urban Ministry Center’s formation in 1994, so she’s seen lots of changes and moves over the years. Sue continues to volunteer two Wednesdays each month—that’s 33 years of feeding the homeless. Thank you, Sue!

These are just a few of the thousands of people who help us serve the homeless each year and Urban Ministry Center could not be more grateful to the many hands and hearts helping us to end homelessness. UMC hosts 500-600 people on our campus each day and demand for services continues to grow, so volunteers are more important than ever. They help us deliver a service, but they are also our best ambassadors and are crucial to change in our community. Director Dale Mullennix puts it best saying, “homelessness is complicated, but there’s an answer.”

Volunteers who are compassionate realists are one of those answers. We have opportunities in almost all areas of the organization and we need you! Fill out the volunteer form today to get connected and begin making a difference.

Anything with Operation preceding it sounds like a military action, right?! Well, this is not KP duty, soldier, this is Operation Sandwich and it’s a campaign to quell hunger (if even for one day) in our homeless neighbors. Operation Sandwich does not require a General or any officer to organize, and in fact, some of our best annual organizers are the Character Council at the Beverly Woods Elementary School—3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders!

The Council has next week covered, with a planned 700 sandwiches a day, each individually wrapped with a cookie or two as an extra treat. It’s a great contribution and one that makes an impact on our neighbors every day. Operation Sandwich eases the burden on the Soup Kitchen and offers neighbors something ‘to go’ if needed. The Soup Kitchen is the initial point of contact for many of our neighbors and a very important setting for building relationships and trust—the first steps in ending homelessness.

One of the Character Council’s teachers, Beth Early, discovered the Soup Kitchen when it was located at St. Peter’s Episcopal on Tryon Street (before the Urban Ministry Center was founded). She was leading a group of Pineville Elementary second graders on a field trip to the Discovery Center when the students observed a line of people waiting for food. An open discussion about homelessness ensued and the children wanted to know how they could help.

Ms. Early, and those Pineville Elementary 2^nd Graders began supporting the Soup Kitchen with sandwich donations. Their support spread to other grades and schools, and today many others use Operation Sandwich as an important part of their service hours, ministry, or team building activities. In fact, last year, 300 groups and individuals contributed over 75,000 sandwiches to the Soup Kitchen!

We can use 700-800 sandwiches each day and have room for more donations. Ideally, sandwiches are individually wrapped, and delivered between 8-9am for use that day. We welcome deliveries of 800, but they are in no way required – you can make as many as you are able and we will combine/coordinate with other groups. Contact Sandra Smith to coordinate your day!

Tulips adorned the tables as a reminder that the season for Room In The Inn (RITI) was over. Since 1996, RITI has provided temporary shelter for the homeless, bringing them indoors to a welcoming environment during the toughest months of the year, December – March. But spring has sprung and Sunday, April 1^st, marked a celebration and thank you to the teams who make it happen.

RITI Director Paul Hanneman provided the thank you’s and shared the impact of this year’s program. 135 congregations/Y’s/colleges provided 18,105 overnight accommodations to 1,588 different individuals. This year brought an increase in families, with the number of children more than doubling from the previous season (from 29 to 62).

Stories and laughs were shared, but what struck me was the extra efforts the coordinating teams make to provide shelter. These coordinating teams come to the Urban Ministry Center to verify eligibility, and match 100-200 people with a host site for the night. If a host site falls through, it’s not “sorry about your luck,” it’s “let’s take action to help these people.” A great example was provided by the Coordinator and Assigner for the Saturday team (pictured below: Bruce Bauman, Coordinator; Paul Hanneman, RITI Director; Geoff McLaughlin, Assigner).

One Saturday there were 12 men who were assigned to a host site that was unable to fulfill its commitment that evening. The team jumped into action, finding two other sites to help the men. The Episcopal Church of the Holy Comforter rarely turns away a request, and agreed to host 3 additional men that evening. University United Methodist, although they were not scheduled to host at all that evening, agreed to take 7 men. Team members Sandra Ward and Phil Reed drove the men to the sites. Mr. Reed purchased dinner for the 7 and spent the night with them. We cannot thank our volunteers enough for routinely reaching out and helping our neighbors.

RITI remains an awesome undertaking, enlisting over 5,000 volunteers each season to provide a warm, safe place, delicious meals, and wonderful fellowship to people who are struggling to find their way. Our thanks to everyone who makes this so successful!