It has been said that the best thing you can do in your life is volunteer.
When it comes to giving our time, opportunities will only grow.
Attaining accommodation in the Energy City is difficult. For those coming to the city for work, if they can't find a place to live, they are also hard up finding a hotel that has vacancies or fits within their budget. The reality is even in a small rural city in the midst of boom times there are homeless.
To provide for those people who have no place to stay during the winter months, the Warm Welcome shelter opened to house the city's homeless overnight either at the Salvation Army or St. Paul's United Church.
The former location is where I found myself one night last week.
I've heard from organizers that many in the community felt the shelter was something of a stain on Estevan's reputation, as people were ashamed of the idea of working poor and others who can't provide shelter for themselves. That stigma is slowly relaxing in regards to the shelter. Of course, as any of the volunteers or organizers will tell you, there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Still, it's a sad and tragic thing to witness homelessness in any community.
On the night I attended the shelter we had five guests. I've written stories about the shelter and the number of guests staying each night, but it was a whole new side of the picture to meet five men who needed a place to sleep. I know how the media works. We report the figures and these homeless people become numbers rather than real people who would otherwise spend their night outside or in an unheated car. It just feels good to help provide that sort of comfort for someone.
After shaking hands with a guest, introducing ourselves to each other, we made coffee, boiled water for tea and set out apples, bananas a small platter of foods and dry soups. Periodically a new guest would arrive over about half an hour.
While I worked the 8 p.m. to 1 a.m. shift, there was also a shift captain, working 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. and another volunteer working until 1 a.m. with me. When we left in the early morning hours another volunteer came in to spend the night, running a shift from 1 a.m. to 8 a.m.
We collected cots, spread them across the auditorium floor and placed mattresses recently donated by St. Joseph's Hospital on them. A large bag filled with blankets, pillows and personal hygiene items went down with each cot.
Before long, the guests, the other two volunteers and I were sitting at a table, sipping a warm beverage of our choosing with an evening snack chatting about ourselves and continuing to get to know one another, commenting on the politics of the day (think Chris Christie and Rob Ford), and turning the chitchat to weather as people are wont to do if no other common ground can suitably fill a conversational lull.
It was interesting and casual, comfortable and intimate. Above all, we were a small contingent of people from different situations and unique walks of life treating each other with a quiet respect.
At about 11:15 that night we made a call to Tim Hortons, which supplies doughnuts and croissants and other goods for breakfast that following morning. I picked up the care package, and after returning, we individually wrapped each item to be served when the guests awoke.
Speaking with Salvation Army Lieut. Brian Bobolo after the shift, he reminded me that as much as the shelter is there to save a handful of people from spending their nights in the cold, it's also about community members and neighbours caring for one another and treating everyone in the city with the dignity that we all deserve.
"It's more about us and how it transforms us," he told me of the experience. "It's what we learn about ourselves."
Helping someone to sleep in a warm bed is special. There is no stigma attached to that.
