 - Riverton’s new Mercy House homeless shelter is looking for volunteers to work overnight shifts so the nonprofit organization can start offering lodging to community members in need as the weather turns colder.){kind=link}
(Riverton, WY) – Riverton’s new Mercy House homeless shelter is looking for volunteers to work overnight shifts so the nonprofit organization can start offering lodging to community members in need as the weather turns colder.
“This is very urgent,” Mercy House Board Chair Grace Andrus said Friday. “We really do need help, and we have people that are in urgent need.”
Mercy House has received two inquiries about lodging so far this month, Andrus said – one regarding a single mother with a baby, and another regarding a family of seven – and this week she learned that another woman with two children needed a place to stay.
To meet the need, Mercy House is “working diligently to have a soft opening for nights with extreme cold weather,” the organization said in a Facebook post this week.
“We are praying for volunteers who will spend the night with our team to help as extra hands so we can open,” Mercy House said in a comment on the post.
The shelter can’t open without a larger team in place to work the night shift, Andrus explained.
“Our director is willing to work on those nights, but we can’t just have one person,” she said. “We need to have at least two, and if (the clients) are women, we want to have a woman staff there as well.”
People interested in helping can visit the Mercy House website, click the button that says “volunteer,” fill out and submit the online volunteer form that appears, then wait to hear back from the director for more details, Andrus said.
Volunteers should expect to receive some training on intake processes and basic self-defense before they join an overnight team at the shelter, she noted.
Renovations
Mercy House organizers have spent the past year improving the shelter facility, Andrus said, with completed projects including a sub-floor replacement, flooring installation, electrical and plumbing repairs, painting, and renovations to accommodate intake needs.
The organization has also received community donations in the form of furniture, bedding, dishes, silverware, and other household items.
“People have been so generous,” Andrus said. “We’re ready to go. We just need people. … We need staff.”
Mercy House plans to host a community Vision Dinner in April to discuss their accomplishments, review the services they’ve been able to offer, and hear from formerly unhoused people about “what their experience is like and how we as a community can support them,” Andrus said, encouraging people to follow the Mercy House Facebook page for more information about the event.