Faith-based partnership helps homeless to succeed

At a time when the president has made faith-based initiatives a national priority, Bloomington is home to a unique collaboration between a church and a secular nonprofit organization.\nIf successful, the Shalom Center could serve as a model on the national scale, director Joel Rekas said. Operating out of the basement in the First United Methodist Church, it provides assistance to the poor and homeless in Bloomington.\nStaff and volunteers do their best to make visitors feel welcome. The center is more than a stopping place for people who are homeless; staff and volunteers help visitors connect with the resources they need to reintegrate them to the community.\nOne of the ways visitors can get connected is by using what Rekas calls the tools of personal business. It is difficult for a person without a phone number or mailing address to apply for a job, he said. Visitors to the center use three phone lines and the center's mailing address when looking for a job or other services. They also have access to about a dozen computers, two local newspapers, laundry facilities, emergency groceries and household products. \nMax Allen, a soft-spoken man with a mustache, baseball cap and flannel work jacket, visits the center most days for breakfast and lunch. He uses the telephones and reads the newspapers to look for work. A painter by trade, he found odd jobs on a few occasions when a woman called the center to find someone to work for her. \nAllen dispels the myth that everyone who uses the center is homeless.\n"There are quite a few people who come down here that are not homeless," Allen said. "But with the meals they serve, telephones and newspapers, some people come down here who might get a check every month, but it's just not enough to pay their bills, eat and everything else. So they come down here and it helps a lot."\nAllen said he appreciates the social outlet the center provides for people who feel isolated.\n"It's a place where if you are alone, you can talk to people and have a place to hang out," he said. "Some people get closed up in their apartments, and it's not good for their mental health."\nOne of the qualities that make the center different from other social service agencies is that it is client-centered instead of services-centered. \nRekas said many of the visitors at the center might feel alienated by traditional community institutions or might have had negative experiences that caused trust issues.\nStaff members take a long-term, flexible approach to helping clients meet their needs. When people visit for the first time they are welcomed and given an overview of everything the center offers. The first interaction focuses on people as individuals.\nStaff members build trust over time until the person comes to them for help and gets connected to the agencies that can provide it. The approach is as effective as trying to immediately provide services for someone in need, Rekas said.\nAdrian Ellis visited the center for the first time last summer with a friend and began to come more frequently during the winter when he was between jobs.\n"If somebody walks into a soup kitchen, they're already beaten down," Ellis said. "The last thing they need is someone to make them feel worthless for being there, and this place doesn't do that. They're nice. They always have been."\nWhen he came in to get some furniture for a new home, someone was looking for people to work roofing houses, and Ellis took the job. He still visits the center when he's not working to see his friends.\nStaff and volunteers drive visitors to doctor's appointments, job fairs or clothing stores to help them get what they need. These acts of caring make visitors feel welcome.\n"Joel's always got a cigarette for everybody," Allen said.\nAnother unique quality is the partnership between a nonprofit and a church. The center started as a partnership between the First United Methodist Church and Shelter Inc., a social services agency that provides services to the homeless. The church provides space, and many church members take an active role in center operations.\nShelter Inc. provides the paid staff members and oversees daily operations.\nSince it opened, the center has moved from a single room in the church upstairs to several rooms in the basement. \nRekas said he has worked with a number of churches, but typically the church offers space or money, and the nonprofit operates the program. At the Shalom Center, the church is an active partner.\n"This church is involved in everything, from planning to oversight to fundraising, in addition to the provision of volunteers," Rekas said.\nThe volunteers are the third unique quality. They drive daily activities.\nThat would be hard to quantify and find funding for, Rekas said, but it reaches people who are difficult to engage and deliver services to.\n"It's one of those few places where someone has time to sit with you over a cup of coffee and just listen," Rekas said.\nLinda Patton, Shelter Inc.'s volunteer coordinator, said when volunteers come into the center and get to know the clients, both parties walk away having made the community a little stronger. \n"The more you interact and know a person face to face, personally connecting with them, the less apt you are to put them in a category," Patton said.\nPatton emphasizes interaction during volunteer training. Usually it means sitting down with somebody and striking up a conversation.\nPatton said there would only be enough volunteers at the center when every visitor had someone to sit and talk with.\nGraduate student Heather Brophy has helped cook lunch at the center once a week since it opened.\nShe sometimes arrives early and eats breakfast or just talks with people. Brophy said the wisdom she discovers while talking to people varying experiences keeps her coming back.\n"I like the opportunity to actually see more," Brophy said. "I think that students can get wrapped up in this little bubble that is IU, and not realize that when we leave IU, there is going to be a whole world of people that are different from ourselves. That's what I enjoy."\nBesides cooking and visiting, volunteers provide GED training, computer courses, job skills classes, housing searches and transportation.\nRepresentatives from 12 churches volunteer at the center, but Rekas said in the next year he would like to see the relationships with those churches formalized.\nThe downtown churches are in a perfect position to house respite and family support centers, he said. \nOne of the ironies of being homeless is if a person on the streets gets sick, he doesn't have anywhere to recover, Rekas said. Instead of getting better, he usually gets worse. A respite center could provide beds or cots. Volunteers could supervise the area and attend to the sick.\nWith an increasing number of families coming into the center daily, the center would like to provide space especially for families. This space would be geared for children. Volunteers could provide day care while adults use the telephones, computers and other center resources.\nSo far, no arrangements for space have been made, but Rekas said feelers have gone out to other churches and the responses have been positive.\n"Churches seem pretty excited about the center, and it's a great way to get them involved," he said.