Blog 1 - 10/4/24

To start, I made some changes to my Final Action Plan, and made my step 5 -- picking up extra shifts --, my step 1. The main reason I did this was to have more time to generate my funds for any expenses I may need to cover.  A screenshot of me asking for extra shifts is provided below:

Over the past 2 weeks, I've researched local homeless shelters, and the main one that caught my eye was the Code Blue Shelter located at the Church on the Mall at the Plymouth Meeting Mall.  When digging for more information via their site, I clicked on the link to "their facebook" to see if they had announced an expected Code Blue day yet, however, I hit a roadblock on the facebook, as it truly didn't seem like it was the link to the correct account.  Though, the account provided did have a couple of mentions about the Church on the Mall's Code Red days. My main worry when it comes to volunteering here, is that there may be a possibility in which we do not hit 32° resulting in me not even getting the chance to volunteer. What drove me to this shelter is how local it is, but also how detailed their set up is and I think I'd get great volunteer experience of every aspect when working there. Regarding the volunteer experience, here's what I found about their volunteer roles: 

• Shelter Monitoring

• - 7pm-11pm - responsible for opening the shelter, setting up cots and tables for food, and monitoring through 11pm

• - 11pm-2am - monitoring during this time slot

• - 2am-5am - monitoring during this time slot

• - 5am-9am - responsible for monitoring until 7am, waking the residents, provide residents with bagged breakfast, collect laundry, and breakdown cots

• Laundry and Cleaning

• - Arrive 7am and assist with cot breakdown if necessary.

• - Clean bathrooms and main area

• - Gather soiled linens and take to designated cleaning facility. Return to shelter location when cleaned and store in storage area.

• Food Set-up & Serving (No Code Blue Training required), 6-9pm

• - Arrive at 6pm to begin setting up food and drinks

• - Serving of dinner begins around 8pm.

Personally, I will try my hardest to volunteer enough times to experience each different role affiliated with the volunteer experience at Church on the Mall so I can really give back to my community and just better myself in these attributes. I hope to learn patience, gain better work ethic, and overall share more sympathy & a helping, guiding hand for the community in which I'm involved. However, I do not want to put all my eggs in the same basket, so my main plan for next week is to dig deeper into shelters to finalize my choices before I apply for volunteering!