Homelessness is a top political issue for any large city across the United States. Nashville’s newly elected leaders will not only be bombarded with complaints and demands to get rid of “these people” but also with questions about how neighbors can help.
Let’s focus today on the helping portion and provide some ideas of how anyone in our community can get involved.
There are plenty of online lists about reasons for volunteering. Here are my top five benefits of volunteerism:
- You make a difference.
- You help build community.
- It leverages resources and helps nonprofits to grow and survive.
- Volunteering creates a purpose and helps your own well-being. For example, it can fight depression and loneliness because not only do you help build community, but you become part of a community. Research has shown people’s well-being increases through volunteering.
- You gain new experiences. You even have the opportunity to either try a new professional direction or enhance your skill set for your chosen career.
When it comes to homelessness, I think we often forget the importance of community building and what an impact volunteers have as you can read by perusing this current issue of The Contributor. Beyond ensuring that a nonprofit keeps on working smoothly, the impact individual volunteers have on people they meet by giving their time, compassion, and expertise is invaluable. Dedicated volunteers develop a bond with the people nonprofits serve. The connections volunteers form is different from a client-staff relationship, which is a give and take. That’s why volunteers play such a crucial role in helping build communities in which people who are in a vulnerable place find their own value and learn to trust again, often after they feel other systems have kept failing them repeatedly.
Think of the person who lost their home because they got sick and did not have health insurance. Think of the person who was incarcerated for years and learns upon their release that no one is willing to give them a living-wage job (or any job, for that matter). Think of how difficult it is to ask for help when you are about to be evicted because your car broke down and you lost both of your jobs that kept you and your children in housing.
Volunteers also keep encouraging staff and often provide a lifeline to a nonprofit team. The work in the nonprofit sector is hard. Secondary traumatic stress is real. Many frontline professions, including in the homelessness field, are extremely vulnerable to emotional distress that is a result of regular and ongoing exposure to hear about the traumatic experiences of the people they serve and feel compassionately about and with their clients.
There are several ways to help when it comes to addressing homelessness. There are so many different options that you can find through Hands on Nashville or by browsing through the Where to Turn In Nashville resource directory.
First, you should decide what your own goals are and what you want to get out of this experience. Depending on your reasons, decide whether you’d like to engage in a one-time, quick in-and-out type of project, or if you are interested in an ongoing volunteer position.
Then think about the impact you’d like to achieve for people experiencing homelessness. On one end of the volunteering spectrum, you help with the basic daily needs for survival (people’s necessities for survival include access to food, water, clothing, sleep, and shelter). On the other end of the spectrum, you want to get involved in long-term solutions that lead to housing and stabilization of people. Do you want to work with adults, men, women, youth, families with children, seniors, LGBTQ+ populations? People struggling with mental health, substance use, chronic homelessness, exiting prisons, etc.? There are all kinds of subpopulations and different organizations serving them.
To help people with survival and relatively short-term commitments: you could volunteer at a food pantry, serve meals at a weekly meal site, help paint rooms at a nonprofit (or other office improvements), donate and deliver furniture for a move-in (people experiencing homelessness do have nothing), put together household and/or hygiene kits, help with a clothing drive, become an overnight shelter monitor, etc.
Another option would be to commit to a specific project that has an end date: help an organization with a fundraising campaign, assist staff a nonprofit booth at an event, hand out flyers, assist a trainer/teacher (often volunteers themselves) with classes a nonprofit offers (arts, computer, legal, etc.) or organize a community drive in your neighborhood after asking a nonprofit what their current needs are (winter supplies, food, underwear, socks, etc.).
Finally, you could become a designated long-term volunteer: Many nonprofits depend on their volunteers and view them as an extension of their team. As such you could become an active board member, a volunteer coordinator, a receptionist taking on four hours a week to help direct people seeking services, a supporter on an outreach team, a host home provider for young people, etc.
Whatever you decide to do, through your volunteer efforts you will not only help others, but gain experiences and personal rewards you did not expect when you started.