How to be helpful to Shelter Staff

There is no doubt that the winter of 2015 is going into the history books. The wrath of Mother Nature presented blizzards, ice storms, and deep freeze not experienced in many years. As a result there were assorted power outages and frozen pipes in places where such events rarely occur. That led to the opening of temporary shelters in places such shelters are rarely, if ever, seen.

Generally speaking, emergency shelters are opened to aid people displaced by a storm or disaster because their homes are without power or have been flooded or destroyed or some other calamity has occurred impacting the delivery of services to a home, neighborhood or community. Most shelters are very short term efforts, just a night or two. When a shelter is opened a shelter manager needs supplies, food, cooks, servers and assistants to help with things like setting up cots, distribution of bedding, blankets, pillows, shelter security, etc.

Entertainment and recreation within the shelter isn't given much of a thought unless a shelter is going to be in place for several days. If you are interested in helping out when a shelter is opened, call the agency in your area that sets up emergency shelters. That agency can certainly use volunteers. Your local fire and police department can steer you to proper agency.

If you'd like to entertain shelter residents by clowning around, be sure to let the agency leadership know and get whatever training they want you to complete. Keep in mind that Red Nose Response offers "soft assistance" and a little comic relief. RNR typically doesn't enter shelters unless we are invited.