Brattleboro’s Good Neighbors
Published in the Brattleboro Reformer, March 7-8, 2009
by Rev. Barbro Hansson, Minister
All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church
Co-chair, Brattleboro Area Interfaith Clergy Association
With the arrival of March, we enter the fourth month of providing a winter emergency overflow shelter and a nutritious, warm meal at the end of the day for Brattleboro’s homeless individuals and families. We are committed to keeping the Overflow Shelter open through the end of March, and longer if the cold weather persists.
At this writing, an average of 25 individuals per night have stayed at the Overflow Shelter. The Shelter, housed at First Baptist Church on Main Street in Brattleboro, involves more than 100 volunteers who staff the two overnight shifts from 7:00 p.m. to 7:00 a.m., as well as 16 faith communities and 17 different groups of people from the community at large who provide meals every evening on a rotating basis. While the Overnight Shelter is managed by the Drop In Center with the help of a part-time, paid coordinator, the Brattleboro Area Interfaith Clergy Association (BAICA) took on the responsibility of making sure there would be a meal prepared every night for all the guests.
At first, we looked within the membership of BAICA to provide all the meals. We asked each member faith community to commit to one night a week. Initially, I was quite concerned about the immensity of this ministry. I wondered whether we would be able to fulfill our commitment without burning out midway through the winter. I was also concerned about asking members of our relatively small faith communities to not only volunteer their time but also foot the bill for these meals, which we thought might involve as many as up to 40 or even 50 people. This at the same time Wall Street and U.S. banks began to seriously fail and everyone was tightening their belts.
It did not take long for Sunday-through-Thursday evening meals to be scheduled by teams of two to four faith communities. We wrestled with what to do about Fridays and Saturdays and wondered who might be willing and able to provide meals those evenings. That is when we asked the Brattleboro Reformer to cover “our” story, which they did with an article on the front page. That same day, my phone started ringing with people wanting to be good neighbors. Robin Scudder was the first one to call. She made my day with her generous and enthusiastic “can do” attitude. More individuals, who recruited their families and friends, neighbors, coworkers, students, fellow book club members, Sangha sitters and spiritual kin, soon signed up to provide one or more Friday and Saturday evening meals. With each phone call, my heart filled with excitement and gratitude. By early January, the entire schedule of 128 evenings was completely filled up.
One good thing often leads to another, and so it has been with this Good Neighbor Ministry. A member of one of our faith communities, Jesse Medina, works for United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) in Chesterfield. He inquired about whether we could use any food donations. Arrangements were made to connect the Brattleboro Area Drop In Center with UNFI to make sure large donations would benefit our local Food Shelf. When a smaller shipment of food is returned to UNFI for whatever reason, Andrew Buttery at Albert’s Organics (a division of UNFI), Pat Blouin and Rosalie Maugin ask Jesse to contact me to find out if the Overflow Shelter is interested. Instead of throwing away food that is returned to UNFI, they prefer to see it go to good use. So far, we have received all kinds of frozen meet and pizza, salad greens, garlic cloves, luncheon meet, juice, cheese and yogurt. Storage of these donations, of course, provided a real challenge. I lamented over the fact that we could not take full advantage of these food donations.
Miracles can and do happen when people care. One enthusiastic member of our community shared the story about the Overflow Shelter with a friend in Connecticut. Her friend happened to have close ties to Brattleboro. The friend called me and asked how he could help. Within a week, he and his wife delivered a freezer to All Souls Church to enable us to take full advantage of the food donations from UNFI. With the help of email, I send out email messages to the meal providers about food donations, schedule reminders, and changes in the number of guests expected at the Overflow Shelter. The Good Neighbors do the rest.
It has been awe-inspiring to see this community-wide ministry take shape and function so well. My colleagues on BAICA and I are deeply touched by the many people from within our 15 faith communities and from the community at large who express their care and compassion by supporting the Winter Emergency Overflow Shelter in so many different ways: volunteering time at night; cooking meals; serving and cleaning up; donating food; and contributing financially to our efforts of sheltering the homeless and feeding the hungry.
I wish the injustices that cause poverty could be addressed and solved once and for all with employment, living wages, affordable housing, and appropriate support systems and social programs for people who need them. Short of that, I thank God that charity and good neighborliness is alive and well in our beloved community.